The Base Hospital

The Base Hospital

This is the history of the 5th Northern General Hospital and its satellites during the Great War. Mobilised in 1914, this unit of the RAMC took over an old asylum (now Leicester University) but within weeks had grown in influence to administer dozens of other hospitals and convalescent homes in several adjacent counties. To the locals in Leicester and the surrounding county it was almost always 'the Base Hospital'; a focus of generous charity and a tangible symbol of their and the nation's sacrifice.

This is a story of courage and of pain; of bureaucracy and imagination, hard work, generosity and loss. It is a story told in the words of those who served, or suffered and were made whole again. It is told through eyewitness accounts and archive images. The story of Leicester's Base Hospital may be applied to all the mainland hospitals: what was true of Leicester during the Great War was repeated throughout the kingdom.

Every aspect of life in the hospital is examined. There are chapters on the staff of the hospital, RAMC and nursing, as well as the VADs (both men and women), its patients and facilities. There is a detailed account of the growth of the buildings and an exhaustive tour of the site, as well as chapters on the North Evington War Hospital and other satellite hospitals and convalescent homes.