Treating the wounded

TORBAY’S most important role during the First World War was looking after the wounded.

During four years of war, trains brought in over 10,400 soldiers to be taken to various grand houses which had been hastily converted into hospitals. Even the Assembly Room at Torquay Town Hall was pressed into service. It accommodated 50 beds and remained in constant use from August 1914 to March 1919.

Stoodley Knowle, the Manor House in the Lincombes and Daison on Chatto Road also took large numbers.

But the biggest humanitarian mission was at Oldway Mansion in Paignton.

Paris Singer paid £5,000 to convert his family home into a hospital. Wealthy American women living in Britain also agreed to fund its work through the American Women’s War Relief Committee. Nancy Astor (the first woman to take her seat in Parliament), was among those raising money to pay for the hospital’s ambulances, operating equipment and beds.

The first wounded arrived on 27 September 1914. The American Red Cross recorded their patients and reported that of the first 1,000, the majority were admitted with wounds from shells, shrapnel and grenades. 179 operations were carried out under general anaesthetic.

When America entered the war in 1917, Oldway became American Military Hospital no.21 caring for American casualties only.

By the end of the war Oldway Mansion had cared for over 5,000 patients.

They were men like Torquay-born George Webber who enlisted in September 1914, fighting in France from June 1916. He was serving in the Tank Corps in November 1917 when he was hit by shrapnel and bayoneted by advancing German troops.

When he was found unresponsive and drenched in blood his comrades assumed he was dead and buried him in a shallow grave, intending to rebury him later.

But George was alive. About 24hrs later he regained consciousness and, when he heard voices, he stuck his arm out of the ground and was rescued - but not before rats had gnawed a cavity in his chest the size of a fist.

He was patched up, and sent back to the front where he sustained further injuries in a gas attack which destroyed the lower half of his lungs.

When George returned to Devon in November 1918 it was to Exeter’s no.5 war hospital, where doctors did their best to help him. He underwent 23 operations in 22 hospitals and recovered sufficiently to return to work on the railways. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard.

A tiny diary survives from when he was living at 8 Mallock Road, Chelston in January 1919. It documents his daily struggles with injuries that had still not healed.

The war may have ended 100 years ago this week, but for people like George the physical recovery, and mental one too, would take much longer.

Wounded soldiers at Oldway Mansion hospital