大象传媒

The Emergency Hospital during the German Occupation of Guernsey

One had to walk everywhere or use horse transport and my mother who was Assistant Matron at the Emergency Hospital very often walked from the Castel to St. Saviour to visit us. On one such occasion she became troubled with a very serious abdominal hernia and I realised it was a hospital case. We were unable to contact the necessary services and I sat her on the saddle of my bicycle and pushed her back to the hospital. Within an hour of her arrival there she was on the operating table, fortunately before too much further damage had been caused.
In 1943 our daughter Marilyn was born at the emergency Hospital. It was always a tricky situation to make the right arrangement for transport to the hospital, which had to be by ambulance, and they required plenty of notice. With the inexperience of a first baby mothers were worried that they would make the right decisions, however it all worked well and we had a lovely daughter, which was a tremendous thrill. Fortunately although in common with many wartime mothers I was unable to feed her, we did have our own cows' milk.

Lily Mauger.
Written from notes in 1995.

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