Seventy-five years after World War II, the Irish doctors and nurses who gave life to France, which was devastated by the war, still linger in the minds of the French.
There were no hospitals or pharmacies left in France after the full devastation occurred during the war. In such a situation, when everything was lost, the nurses and doctors in Ireland came to their aid.
The 100-bed hospital were sent to Normandy. Nurses and doctors from 20 different counties in Ireland lined up together for a pop-up hospital. ‘The Irish Hospital’ is a pop-up hospital built by the Irish Red Cross in St. Law, a small village which the Allies destroyed.
In two short years, volunteer officers treated 1,400 patients and provided more than 22,000 consultations before the hospital was handed over to the French Red Cross in 1947.
The late Father Jim was one of the first doctors to be recruited, said Phyllis Gaffney, a former French lecturer at UCD. She said the incident was completely unexpected and there were no hospitals or pharmacies left in the town.
She said it took a few months for Irish volunteers to collect supplies, and in the summer of 1945 more than 3,500 crates were sent from Dublin port to the small rural town where the hospital was built. The patients at the hospital clearly remember the service and dignity of the Irish staff, she added.
The story of the hospital revisited today on RTE Radio 1’s documentary on One today.
The presenter of the event, Aidan O’Donnell, spoke to a resident of St-Lo, who was born in an Irish hospital in 1946. “We will never forget what the Irish did for us,” he said.
The work done by kind-hearted Irish health workers is still remembered to this day, and will always be remembered.