Temple Meads railway station
‘He came home and I didn’t know him’
Gwynn Newman about her husband David, gassed in France in 1916
Over 70,000 wounded servicemen arrived from the various theatres of war into Bristol via Avonmouth docks or Temple Meads railway station.
The first hospital train arrived at Temple Meads less than a month after the start of the war, with 120 wounded soldiers from the battle of Mons.
At Temple Meads, volunteers from the Red Cross, the St John’s Ambulance Brigade and the Women’s Voluntary Aid Detachment met the wounded with cups of tea and moved them on to hospitals in a fleet of ambulances and private cars.
The soldiers had travelled in ambulance trains, adapted to carry stretchers for quick transfer from train to platform to ambulance to hospital ward. More stretchers would be laid out on the platform to take the worst cases of the ‘walking wounded’.
Over 70,000 wounded servicemen arrived from the various theatres of war into Bristol via Avonmouth docks or Temple Meads railway station.
The first hospital train arrived at Temple Meads less than a month after the start of the war, with 120 wounded soldiers from the battle of Mons.
At Temple Meads, volunteers from the Red Cross, the St John’s Ambulance Brigade and the Women’s Voluntary Aid Detachment met the wounded with cups of tea and moved them on to hospitals in a fleet of ambulances and private cars.
The soldiers had travelled in ambulance trains, adapted to carry stretchers for quick transfer from train to platform to ambulance to hospital ward. More stretchers would be laid out on the platform to take the worst cases of the ‘walking wounded’.