Another gem from my late Aunt Mary’s stunning photo collection, much of which consists of hundreds (or thousands) of loose photographs in envelopes and boxes. The original of this is only a little bigger than a credit card. To find out where this is, all I had to do was google “118th General Hospital“—thank God for the Internet age—and it turns out to be where she spent most of her four years in the Pacific:
The 118th General Hospital was a U.S. Army military hospital built in 1942 at Herne Bay, New South Wales. This was the largest military hospital in Australia during World War II. It was planned as a hospital centre of five hospitals consisting of 490 timber barracks-type buildings, which could house a total of 4,250 beds and accommodate up to 1,250 patients and 3,500 staff. The hospital was formed by doctors and nurses from the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. The hospital staff arrived in Sydney during June 1942 and ran a 400-bed hospital from August 1942, with a section at the Hydro Majestic Hotel at Medlow Bath.
Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, visited the 118 General Hospital on 8 September 1943.
Great atmospherics on this shot. I’ll be posting more of these over the next few days and weeks. I’ve got some really wild ones.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
looking forward to more of these, they are so evocative! but more than just posting them here, you should do some kind of art project or show or something with them. the whole faded, damaged, dreamy quality of these is amazing, like postcards from a long gone parallel universe (which i suppose in a sense is exactly what they are).
You’re right about the project. A book, perhaps. I have such an amazing stash of artifacts.
my mother was in the 118th, they served in Australia, New Guinea, and, finally, Leyte, The Phillippines – they were the last hospital unit to be decommissioned – Brian Madden wrote a book about the hospital in Sydney called Hernia Bay (the hospital was located in a place called Herne Bay)
Hi, Mary! Thanks for filling in some of the details. I think I have that book, actually, along with more things about the 118th (including what must be thousands of black-and-white photos), all from my Aunt Mary’s house in Maine. I guess it was inevitable in the days of Google that others with connections to that unit would show up on these pages. I hope you enjoyed this!
Great photo, but I’m not sure this was taken in Herne Bay. I live close to the site, which is now the suburb of Riverwood, and I am not aware of such an abundance of palm trees, as visible in the photo. The image looks like it was taken in the tropics somewhere.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Hi Daniel! Well, I’m no expert. I do have a ton of material I inherited from my aunt about her experiences as a U.S. Army nurse in this hospital that I haven’t completely examined, and the answer is undoubtedly contained within. But the Wikipedia reference is quite explicit about the Sydney location. Maybe the palm trees were all cut down?
Hi JHF,
The area was predominately eucalypts, and mangroves. Not the usual location for palm trees. I came across this link (http://history.amedd.army.mil/ancwebsite/pictorial_hist.html) and a corresponding image which suggests the Philippines, as Mary mentioned above. That image looks similar to the one above.
Nice site, btw.
Yes, you must be right. Mary’s comment above is what I should be looking at. The 118th was at Herne Bay but ended up in Leyte later.
I lived in the huts at Herne Bay as a child. I started in the school there. Later moved to a house in Hannans Rd.
As a boy born in 1957.. we lived in Lily Ave, off Bell St, My early memory of mum taking me to a small barracks shop up the top of Bell St in the last of the huts.. In later years as they were demolished.. I’d walk what was left of the old broken roads though to Riverwood shops.. .. play in the old huts.. My grandmother lived in one in the 50’s.. I’ can only JUST recall here there. Now all this is gone.. a freeway runs over it.. not a shred of our history really left.. less the names of a few streets .. in a sea of united nations of its changing population. Sad as during the 60’s & 70s.. many ex military families moved in . the blokes had a sense of loyalty to each other and the nieghbours. They had a deeper sense of community then we do now.
My father was in the 118th General Hospital in the Phillipines I posted pics in Ancestry.com My tree is Susan Spangler Elicker Mundis Dad’s name was Robert L Elicker 1918-1970 York PA I have all his WWII records posted with black and white pics in the Phillipines He ended up with yellow fever and cholera and almost died He was sent to Sydney Australia to recover and then met mom in Sydney and they married before coming home to PA USA
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