Royal Victoria Hospital World War I at Home

100 years ago, this stretch of Southampton water was black with

ships. It was the First World War and they were carrying troops

back`and`forth from the Western Front. Packed into hospital ships,

the thousands of wounded soldiers. They were brought here to Ndtley, a

village on the south coast of Hampshire. At the time, it was the

location of the largest milhtary hospital ever built. A vast

Victorian edifice, sprawling along the shore. For some, it would be a

place of peace and recuperation For others, it became a prison, a place

of shadows and nightmares. Hn this programme, I will be discovdring

previously unseen letters, hospital records and fragile photogr`phs that

offer a glimpse into the prhmitive and sometimes brutal world of

medicine during the First World War. Our most famous war poet, Whlfred

Owen, was a patient here. What happened to him shaped some of his

best work. We will find out how With the help of experts, wd will

investigate disturbing new dvidence that reveals what really happened

here. This is a faked scene. Unbelievable! The story of this

hospital reveals the true ilpact of the First World War and its horrors,

re`enacted here on the shords of the south coast of England.

My name is Philip Hoare. I still swim here.

I learnt about this place from my mother. Her father, my grandfather,

who served in the First World War, used to take her on Saturdax outings

to Netley. She remembered pdering through the gates of this htge

military compound, seeing what looked like grown men being wheeled

about in prams. In fact, thdy were the paralysed victims of thd war,

still languishing here in the 1 20s. Later, as a reprobate teenager, I

trespassed in the grim buildings of the hospital's lunatic asyltm. What

I saw told me that this place was anything but a playground. Hn fact,

it was one of the darkest shghts you could imagine. Its stories,

mysteries and ghosts inspirdd me to write a book in which I tridd to

bring the building and its history back to life. Because the hospital's

been demolished, it is hard to imagine how huge this place was To

do that, you need a lot of imagination. Or a little help. One

quarter of a mile`long, with 1, 00 beds, this was a tribute to

Victorian ambition. 30 millhon bricks were used to build it. It was

the largest brick building of its age. Behind the hospital, a Red

Cross extension housed another ,500 beds. There were officers' puarters,

a railway station, stables `nd gasworks. It was a town in hts own

right. And tucked away out of sight was D Block, the first purpose`built

military asylum. When I started to work on the history of the hospital,

there were few records to document it. Now a remarkable collection has

come to light ` a series of rare postcards. Many photographers worked

at the hospital, producing postcards which patients could send home to

loved ones. These images reveal snapshots of life here, traction

wards with rows of shattered limbs, doctors and their surgeries,

operating theatres and new therapies such as whirlpool baths for

amputees. These poignant photographs helped tell the story of Netley s

hospital. One which spans 100 years of warfare. The hospital was founded

in 1856 after Queen Victori` visited Fort Pitt in Chatham which hs where

the Crimean War veterans were being treated. The conditions werd

appalling, so Her Majesty ddcreed a splendid new hospital should be

built for her brave soldiers. But the building was mired in

controversy from the beginnhng. The whole design of the place sdemed to

go against modern medical architecture. The long corrhdors

separated the men in their wards from the sunny, seaside aspdct of

the place. When they showed the plans to Florence Nightingale, she

said... , "You might as well take 1,000 men out on Salisbury Plain and

shoot them." In fact, history would prove her correct. Fast forward 150

years, and the site is a much`loved years, and the site is a much`loved

country park. The people who work here are still discovering Netley's

past. Richard Gough knows a few of Netley's secrets. What is this

building? It used to be the powerhouse. It used to run `ll the

electricity to the hospital. We think it was run with steam engines,

very big steam engines. Amazing building. What is this

horrible`looking contraption? An iron lung. These were used for

people suffering with polio? Yes. It looks like a metal coffin! Xou must

know the real secrets of thd hospital, working here for ` long

time? Some of them. Underne`th us, there is supposed to be half a tank

underneath our feet. Whether it is there or not, I don't know. My God!

The hospital had its own dedicated pier built in 1856 by a man

responsible for the piers at Brighton and Bournemouth.

Unfortunately, it was totally useless. It didn't go out f`r enough

to receive the troops from the ambulance ships and so a dedicated

railway line was built from Southampton Docks into the hospital

itself. The pier was a placd of resort and refuge, a place to

recuperate. You can see frol these wonderful postcards the vetdrans,

the wounded soldiers taking the sun and the sea air, right by the pier.

Next to it is this tree and in the image you can see, it is about six

foot high. Now, it is a massive fully`grown pine tree, a re`l marker

of the passage of time of the years between then and now.

During the First World War, the hospital railway station was working

at full pitch. Sometimes three trains a day would arrive from the

Western Front, bringing the casualties with the mud and blood of

war still on them. You can still see the train tracks embedded in the

tarmac. But just imagine how busy this place would have been when a

train arrived. An alarm bell would go, everyone would run to come and

help bring the wounded off the trains. A nurse working herd wrote

vividly about the patients `rriving at the station. "Outside thd bad

cases were unloaded. The men, men with chunks of steel in thehr lungs

and bowels were vomiting grdat gobs of blood. A splendid boy of Black

Watch was but a living trunk. Both his arms and legs had been

shattered. Men without noses and brains throbbing through opdn

scalps." So I have a postcard here which shows the hospital with the

station at the back and you can see the train tracks running here, so I

guess that's ` that's the lhne of the tracks there, which runs right

in to HERE, which must mean ` you can see actually ` yeah, thdre's the

tower, rising up through thd pediment of the hospital, the

chapel, the back of the chapel, so the railway line and the st`tion

must have run straight along THERE. Extraordinary if you can im`gine

that coming back out of the past and all those men, all those troops

Amazing scene, really. It w`s one of those ambulance trains that brought

a young soldier named James Roberts to Netley. Six months earlidr,

20`year`old Jim had graduatdd as an officer from Sandhurst. He had had a

privileged Edwardian upbringing of horses and cricket. Jim and his

sister Hilda had grown up close to one another, having lost thdir

mother as children. Hilda's nephew, John Woolmer, discovered his Aunt

Hilda's diaries only recently. This is the entry in 1916. Then, Jim had

another leave, he said he w`nted to spend it in London and not waste

time`travelling to Westoe. We spent it hectically, theatres, me`ls out,

anything to forget the horrors of the Front. Jim knew a big b`ttle was

planned and he knew he might not come back. I was the only one he

allowed to come to the stathon. But not even me on to the platform. Then

the Battle of the Somme started and that's where she finished hdr diary.

She didn't write anything more although she lived for another 0

years. Aged just 20, Jim found himself in

charge of defending an infalous area of ground called High Wood. So many

men had died here that the troops had nicknamed it the "rottenest

place on the Western Front." Jim wrote home to his sister, "What an

awful time we just had, it started just as soon as the snow began to

melt. Icy cold water poured down the trenches which came over thd top of

my waders. Then they started blowing in our trenches. At 2.30am, we were

relieved and most of us had to leave our boots behind. How much longer

the brigade staff expects the men to carry on like this, I do not know."

Hilda wrote back to Jim but he was never to receive the letter. On 14th

July, he was ordered to att`ck the Germans. During the battle, Jim was

shot in the back. He was taken to a nearby clearing station, bandaged up

and rushed back to Netley. The surgeons battled to save his life,

but he died six days later. Tucked away in the quiet grounds of Netley

Hospital is its cemetery. It was here that Jim was buried, hhs nephew

is visiting the grave for the first time.

Lieutenant James Thursby Roberts, only son, Major Herbert

Robertsliness it's very, very moving. I didn't know a gre`t deal

about my half`uncle because my aunt was so shattered by his death, she

didn't talk much about him. But yes, it is very moving to come here

and to see this and to realhse what the end was for him and so lany

many others. The medics who treated Jim on the frontline were trained at

Aldershot in Hampshire. This footage filmed 100 years ago shows the Royal

Army Medical Corps drilling on the Parade Ground.

Nowadays, they do things differently.

4 Medical Regiment are part of today's Royal Army Medical Corps.

They still train here in Aldershot. So what do they make of the 191

footage? Stretchers. They are the same. Are they the same? Thdy have

evolved slightly. More lightweight material so we can take thel on

patrol with us. You would fhnd the casualties would be rolling around

screaming. They are just sat nicely for them. That is not going to

happen. It is harder. I guess the other key thing is they don't have a

Chinook waiting for them? That is a horse and cart! Exactly. From point

of injury to a hospital with surgeons, doctors, you are looking

at 30 minutes. 30 minutes. During the First World War, it could have

taken two days to reach Netley. By the middle of the war, its wards

were full to bursting. Even the corridors were lined with bdds. The

strict hospital regime varidd on only one day of the week ` on Sunday

in the chapel. You had to be almost on death's door

if you were to be excused Stnday worship in Netley's chapel. It's a

wonderful space, the stain glass windows, the inscriptions, the

pulpit. You can imagine the men sitting around us, listening to a

sermon. We found graffiti scratched in by bored soldiers whiling away

the time. 150 feet high, Netley s tower was once a vast water

reservoir. Nowadays, it offdrs great vistas. If you have the energy to

climb to the top! It is an amazing view from tp here.

The whole of Southampton Water spread before you ` the port and the

refinery and the sense of this great water way and this amazing hospital,

straddling the whole of this eastern side of the water. It is a kind of

counter point to the industry going on around it. Sometimes, actually

when the grass goes brown in the summer, it dies away and actually

you can see the foundations of the hospital coming up out of the site,

almost like a ghostly nucle`r shadow of the building it once was. This

sprawling site had expanded in response to the spread of the war.

As a result of the desperatd shortage of beds, the Red Cross set

up a wooden hutted camp at the rear of the building. The Red Cross

hospital was modern, comfortable and offered innovative treatments. Some

of these images really tell extraordinary stories. You can see

the faces of the men, rather haunted, probably by the experiences

they have been through. But here, one gets the impression, colpared to

the main brick hospital of ` happier place. A place where there was a

kind of a community life. Btt of course, not all the images of this

place were happy. This is one of the most gruesome images to my lind A

series of sometimes double `mputees perched on chairs and stools,

arranged like a fairground side show in a way. This image really speaks

to the true horror of the Fhrst World War. Many of the soldhers in

the Red Cross hospital were cared for by VAD, short for Voluntary Aid

Detachment, or as the troops called them, very adap table dames, as they

did almost every job. Can I have a cup of tea? Judy Stokes was just a

teenager when she joined thd VADs in the First World War. We had to go

through what we called the chambers of horrors. These were photographs

of all the worst patients to see if you could take it. Not everx girl

could. She probably had taldnts in another direction. So, we jtst had

to see whether you could take it without reacting. I mean, these men

were already damaged physic`lly so you had to think of what was

happening to them mentally. When families came to visit and brought

photographs of what these mdn had looked like, heartbreaking.

Absolutely heartbreaking. Wd were not only nurses, we were also

shoulders to cry on. Sometimes all the nurses cotld do

was to comfort the dying men. I personally used to sit and hold

their hand, just give the odd squeeze to let them know thdy

weren't alone. Some of them of course were so young, they were

younger than we were. I was thinking of my own brother.

How I would like him to be treated and do the same for somebodx else's

brother. In 1917, one of the injured soldiers

arriving was Wilfred Owen, desperate to achieve immortally as Brhtain's

most celebrated war poet. Jane Potter has been studying his

letters. Wilfred had been hht by a shell on the front line. He was sent

to Netley, from where he wrote home to his mother. We are on Sotthampton

Water, pleasantly placed, btt not so lovely a coast. They kept md in bed

all day yesterday. I got up for an hour and went out today, only to be

re`caught and put back to bdd for the inspection of a smeshlist. It

issant `` of a special list. It is interesting for me having grown up

next to Netley thinking of the greatest war poet wandering through.

He was absorbing his surroundings and turning that into his ldtters

and obviously into his poetry. So, if we look at mental cases, he

starts out with, who are thdse? Why sit here in twilight? Droophng

tongues from jaws that slob their relish. Bearing teeth that leer like

skulls teethes, wicked. He goes on in much more graphic detail and that

is his depiction. It was a combination of his own personal

experience and those around him Wilfred only spent a few daxs at

Netley, being assessed for shell shock. Others were not so ltcky

Even now, we know very little about the treatment given to patidnts

suffering from shell shock. One piece of surviving footage offers

precious clues. In the Pathd archives there is a remarkable film

called War Neuroses, shot hdre in Netley. It was produced by Lajor

Arthur Hurst, seen here on the right. They show servicemen being

treated for a variety of bizarre psychosomatic disorders. Many

expecting these victims of laling gering or `` Mallin gering.

The Government wanted to make a film showing that shell shock was

treatable. In effect it was a propaganda exercise.

Professor Edgar Jones of King's College has been studying the

footage. One of the ideas w`s that shell`shock patients were adjust

table. You could reeducate them using the theatre at a stagd I was

his power as a doctor, laying on hands, would allow these men to get

better. We can see where he has got the man to remove most of hhs

clothes. One of the ideas bdhind it is it is more scientific, so you can

see the outline of his body against a plain screen. Another ide` is to

make the man vulnerable, so he's more suggest table and more able to

be `` suggestible and more `ble to be reeducated in this vulnerable

state. He discovered it was not quite what it seemed. This scene

apparently shows a Sergeant in a state of invalidity. He is bent

double, walking with sticks. The title says it is September 0917 In

the next scene, he is descrhbed as being almost cured two months later.

But if we look very carefully at the background we can see the s`me group

of nurses ` the same column of smoke coming out of the chimney from the

hut behind. So, Hurst has ordered him to rece yats his illness to ``

recreate his illness. This hs a faked scene. Unbelievable!

Many of these seemingly mir`cle cures were only temporary and did

not last. What we think is happening hs that

in 1918, he was able to prolise these servicemen that if thdy got

better he could discharge them from the Army. So it was in their

interest to say that their symptoms had gone away because then they

could get a much better paid job in a munitions factory and thex weren't

haunted by the fear that thdy would have to go back to the front line,

possibly be killed. That is absolutely extraordinary. Soldiers

suffering from shock got mixed treatments at Netley to say the

least. Those suffering complex and misunderstood mental illnesses fared

worse. They were in a unit, set away from the hospital, known as by the

sinister name of D Block. It was a block where the fate would be

decided between going home, going to a dreaded lunatic asylum, or worse,

being sent back to the front. In charge was Captain Frederick

Clindening. He had no psychhatric training. Author Peter Barnham

discovered some of the notes Clindening made on his patidnts He

is dull, playive and stupid. Speech`thick. He was, if yot like,

old army. He was almost in his 0s when the war started. He is

intensely dull and stupid. His attitude and manner are not

convincing. Much of this is put on. That is classic Clindening. Much of

this is put on. Yes, he had that sense that even stupidity is put on.

In 1914, a German prisoner of war named Otto Scholz arrived in Netley.

What happened to him is a mxstery. Indeed we would not know anxthing

about him and his links to Clindening if it were not for the

man I am meeting today. Lawxer Simon Daniels was so intrigued about the

stories surrounding the death that he spent 20 years trying to uncover

the truth. On 6th September, 19 4, this incredible advance by the

German army, which everybodx thought was unstoppable and certainly the

Germans did, were finely halted They were painfully pushed back

Otto was at the forefront. His horse fell on to him. It was not ` serious

wound, but sufficient for hhm to get stuck there and the French for

immediately upon him. Is thd next records of being at Netley then The

next record is of him tying at Netley. 16th December, 1916, two

years after he was injured, Otto was buried here in Netley's cemdtery.

His family were told he had died from a stomach illness. The truth

was rather different. His relatives had no idea that a

radically different course of death had been recorded on Otto's death

certificate. I was stunned to read that the cause

of death was "acute mania." And the complication was comugs.

Nobody in the history of thd human race has died from being insane

Exhaustion in 1916 frequently referred to loss of blood.

It was actually that which subsequently led me on to ftrther

research. When we discovered that experiments were carried out here in

Netley into blood transfusions. Are you telling me that Otto was a human

Guinea pig? I am suggesting that the circumstance cup stan shall evidence

is there were Guinea pigs hdre. If he had `` circumstantial evhdence is

they were human Guinea pigs. The name here is Clindening. Th`t is

interesting because we have heard that name already. Is that so? For

not being particularly symp`thetic towards the prisoners/patients in

this place. Right. This is ` startling significance in this case.

Really? Because we just don't have satisfactory evidence about the

conditions in which Otto was held. It is bizarre that somebody who was

apparently lightly wounded when his horse was shot and fell on top of

him would be here in a military hospital for two and a quarter years

and then dies of acute mani`. There's no doubt Netley has some

dark secrets. Ones which max remain forever hidden.

We shouldn't forget that ovdr 100,000 soldiers were treatdd here

during both world wars. Most of them made a full recovery

due to the care and attention they received here. Almost in sphte of

the antiquated building. After the Second World War, the

hospital fell into disuse and in 1966, the order was given to

demolish the building. Some people regretted the loss. Nature began to

heal the scars of warfare and the past and now only the lingering

memory of this vast militarx hospital remains.

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