One question would be, was it part of his job to visit hospitals? The only time that I can think of when it would have been was when he was a battalion commander in the Royal Scots Fusiliers when (if possible) it would have been part of his job to have visited wounded from his command. Of course, in the conditions prevailing in WWI, that probably wouldn't have been very feasible. Other than that, I can't think of a time when it would have been part of his duties. I would doubt that hospital personnel would appreciate miscellaneous visiting firemen conducting "visits" with all the dislocation that would entail.
Jonathan Hayes
-------------- Original message from Doug Russell <airdri...@hotmail.com>: --------------
Though not as dramatic as the skin graft episode, Churchill did visit a military hospital in Natal upon his arrival there in 1899 to see his Fourth Hussars friend Reggie Barnes who had been wounded in action in the Boer War. Douglas S. Russell
> Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:17:08 -0700
> Subject: [ChurchillChat] Re: Churchill "did not like to visit hospitals"
> From: dkaraya...@gmail.com
> To: ChurchillChat@googlegroups.com
>
>
> Churchill himself offers a slightly less heroic, but more humorous --
> and human -- account. He sometimes adjusted accounts after, of course,
> in the case of My Early Life to inspire young men of Britain to follow
> his example as an average man. Same reason he often focused on stories
> of how poor he'd been as a student. The phonetics of the accent are a
> nice touch.
>
> Here's his account from My Early Life:
>
> In Cairo I found Dick Molyneux, a subaltern in the Blues, who like
> myself had been attached to the 2 ist. He had been seriously wounded
> by a sword-cutabove his right wrist. This had severed all the muscles
> and forced him to drop his revolver. At the same time his horse had
> been shot at close quarters. Molyneux had been rescued from certain
> slaughter by the heroism of one of his troopers. He was now proceeding
> to England in charge of a hospital nurse. I decided to keep him
> company. While we were talking, the doctor came in to dress his wound.
> It was a horrible gash, and the doctor was anxious that it should be
> skinned over as soon as possible. He said something in a low tone to
> the nurse, who bared her arm. They retired into a corner, where he
> began to cut a piece of skin off her to transfer to Molyneux's wound.
> The poor nurse blanched, and the doc tor turned upon me. He was a
> great raw-boned Irishman. 'Oi'll have to take it off you,' he said.
> There was no escape, and as I rolled up my sleeve he added genially,
> "Y'eva heeard of a man being flayed aloive? Well, this is what it
> feels loike." He then proceeded to cut a piece of skin and some flesh
> about the size of a shilling from the inside of my forearm. My
> sensations as he sawed the razor slowly to and fro fully justified
> his description of the ordeal. However, I managed to hold out until he
> had cut a beautiful piece of skin with a thin layer of flesh attached
> to it. This precious fragment was then grafted on to my friend's
> wound. It remains there to this day and did him lasting good in many
> ways. I for my part keep the scar as a souvenir."
>
>
>
> On Jun 17, 5:25 pm, carolmuelle...@sbcglobal.net wrote:
> >
> > Churchill did one better than just a hospital visit to a fellow officer in his early career during 1898 in the Sudan. Hearing that fellow officer Richard Molyneaux was badly wounded and needed a skin graft, he promptly showed up at the hospital and donated a piece of himself for a skin graft; Churchill received a letter 47 years later from the donee See a charming description of the incident from WSC himself on page 100 of "Churchill A Life by Sir Martin Gilbert", the Owl Book Edition by Henry Holt for the tale (among other sources).
> >
> > Carol
>
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