ESTABLISHING A HOSPITAL

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24372, 26 September 1944, Page 2

ESTABLISHING A HOSPITAL

QUICK WORK IN ITALY (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) DIV. H.Q.. September 23. The retreating enemy was only a few miles up the road. Occasional shells fell round a cluster of buildings where a handful of New Zealanders were accommodated by the shores of the Adriatic. . They were the “holding” party of what was to be a New Zealand General Hospital. They were there to hold the buildings against all-comers, that is, anyone else wanting to requisition them. Then an advance party arrived, and without delay there began the great task of establishing a fully-equipped hospital with 600 beds. The enemy was only two towns away even then, and towns are not many miles apart in Italy. The railhead was a hundred miles back at that time, and 150 three-ton trucks bringing hospital equipment joined from there in a great stream of north-bound traffic. Four days after their arrival the hospital took in its first patients. A day or two later the first operation was performed—this on Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, after his accident in an aeroplane—while alterations were still being made to the building converting it into a surgical block. When I first visited the hospital, the equipment had just started to arrive. It was stacked in great piles in the courtyard. Inside the building Italians were at work on the alterations, and outside our engineers were forming access roads. I am told the engineers had the whole place roaded within 24 hours. Little more than a week later I returned. In large, bright and airy wards were neat rows of beds, and sisters and nurses went about their duties as if they had been in the place for months instead of days. Outside there was an orderly array of tents for the hospital staff, and closer to the buildings were tent wards, the floors of which were being concreted. Buildings and grounds were facing a long stretch of perfect beach only a few yards away which had been a health resort for the children of employees of an electricity supply concern in Rome, On the •pale blue walls of one ward were bright paintings of Pinnochio, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and other characters of appeal to children. The central building lends itself well to the needs of administrative, laboratory, Xray, and other • departments, all of which surround the spacious courtyard. You walked between a vine-covered pergola to reach the surgical block, the building showing on all sides more windows than wall. There is plenty of flat roof space where the more fortunate patients can catch all the sunlight available. In a detached building are the sisters’ and nurses’ messes, and by them their tent quarters. Altogether, it is a pleasant place for our wounded and sick.