BMH Berlin

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It is now closed though the building remains in use as a Krankenhaus. The new BMH Berlin building was opened in May 1967 (cited in the book Sub Cruce Candida: A Celebration of One Hundred Years of Army Nursing). Address of BMH Berlin The old BMH Berlin was sited in the Spandau borough of Berlin and the new built BMH Berlin was in Charlottenburg area. The old hospital is now a police barracks and the new hospital continues to be a community hospital. You can view the area of BMH Berlin on Google Maps by typing Berlin into the search box, then Dickensweg. It is the block surrounded by Dickensweg to the North, Ragniter Allee to the East, Heer Strasse to the South, and Passenheimer Strasse to the West. There are lots of streets around there named after British authors and poets. The military post code for Berlin was BFPO 45. It is said of the old BMH Berlin that what was above ground was also below ground, ie.a bunker. Sadly none of the QARANC.co.uk team had a German posting and would love to expand this page with more details about this former army hospital and include a photograph. If you are a former or serving member of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps we would love your help. If you would like to contribute any info, photographs or share your memories of BMH Berlin then please contact me. Memories of BMH Berlin Re your piece on BMH Berlin. I served as an Infantry Medic with the Royal Hampshire Regiment from 1983 to 1985 and BMH Berlin was well known to me. Yes it did have a full hospital complex underneath the main building with external access provided by sloping ramps from the MT pool on the north side and if memory serves me right one on the south and east facing the main highway the Heestrasse. The hospital was accessed internally through the sub basement via 4 foot thick blast doors with submarine type locking wheels and air filters for NBC/CBRN as its now known. All along the floor were luminous lines of different colour indicating where they led i.e mortuary purple building above was designed for in the event of a nuclear blast to collapse like a house of cards to give more overhead protection from the deadly radiation released. Richard Tyne ********************************************* I worked at BMH Berlin as a civilian ("Labourer, General - 14 Indep PCLU") during 1969 and 1970. Administrative Officer in those days was Major D.P. Bullough, RAMC. Indeed there was an emergency hospital under the main building, as Richard Tyne rightly says. This was there "just in case", and it was only used once or twice a year as part of the usual military exercises. I remember these exercises as particularly pleasant because most BMH staff (including the sergeant in charge of us civilians) disappeared behind the thick bunker doors for hours, sealed off from the outer world - which meant leisure time for the rest of us, e.g. enjoying the extra cup of tea in the TocH, sunbathing on the roof of the main building, from where you had spectacular views over neighbouring Olympic Stadium or the skyline of Berlin. Those were the days ... Dr. Christian H. Freitag ******************************************* I was in the Intelligence Corps in 1961 serving with a small army unit at RAF Gatow, Berlin. My wife and I lived in Charlottenburg and our daughter, Susan, was born at BMH Berlin on 29th September 1961. She owed her life to the close attention of the Queen Alexandra nurses, as the umbilical cord became wrapped round her neck in the course of labour. She was delivered by Caesarean section ( Kaiserschnitt!) by Major Shaw, obstetrician. Don Alexander ******************************************* I also remember BMH Berlin, the sub-basement hospital-bunker was used by the stag guard whenever Hess was in for treatment, it was an arduous gig, with 18 hours on, 6 off, sleeping in the basement. It was also used as a base for medivac exercises, the Doctors and Nurses making-up the wounds and injuries using surplus store clothing which could be cut, ripped and burnt. The troops - usually borrowed from the infantry - were given a broken arm, smashed-up face or asphyxia make-up, internal bleeding 'grey' etc...and sent to the 'battle field' in out-going ambulances, snuck into the scenario, treated with first-aid and sent back (often in the same ambulance! After it had gone round the corner to join the 'front end' of the exercise). On the occasion I took part we worked out that if they gave me a pair of very large combat trousers I could fold my leg up inside, they then cut the leg at the knee, put a pink plasticine 'crater' over the knee, ran a catheter tube from the knee to a blood-bag at my waist/belly, stuck some bits of smashed bone and bacon in the plasticine, smeared it with a maroon gelly, blocked the catheter with a bit of goo and liberally coated the area in red ink before sending me out in the ambulance. When we got to Ruleben Fighting City, I was carried into the back of one of the buildings (I couldn't walk very well and they wanted the wound to stay intact and laid out on the floor, a thunder flash was set off and I was told to keep screaming until I got in the ambulance, and start screaming again when we got back to BHM! Medics ran in, saw the blood spurting from my missing leg and momentarily thought I was a 'No Duff'! dealt with me - Tourniquet and then ignored me while they dealt with the more complicated/serious stuff. By the time they got me and another amputee (arm) on stretchers the last ambulance (we had Unimogs in BB) had left so they chucked us both in the back of an open-topped Lanny. Just after we turned off the Heerstrasse and were curling round the side of the Olympia Stadion my weight shifted or my arm fell across my stomach or something, anyway the catheter started pumping the dregs of the blood-bag which spread out the back in the slipstream and a young German woman following us in a silver VW crashed into the line of parked cars beside the stadium, whether it was due to blood on the windscreen or shock at what she 'thought' she'd seen we never knew as the medics had worked out what was happening and high-tailed it round to the hospital and shot down the ramp! I also had 4 wisdom teeth extracted in one go under 'general' at BMH Berlin and was in and out in less than 24 hours. Hugh Walter, late 1 Glosters, Berlin Brigade 1986 - 1988. ******************************************* A QARANC wall plaque and shield is available to buy through Amazon. The QA shield is hand made and ready to hang on the wall. . Buy Now. Findextrawork Since leaving the QA's we have done an assortment of self employed work and jobs, some which only take an hour a week, others have been full time. We have written about these at our other website Findextrawork at www.findextrawork.co.uk where we share the information for free to help others with information and resources about earning more money. Visit Findextrawork for more information. Rudolf Hess The most infamous patient at BMH Berlin was the deputy leader to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party Walter Richard Rudolf Hess who was captured during a flight to Scotland in May 1941 at the height of World War Two. He was tried at the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to life imprisonment and was imprisoned at nearby Spandau Prison. During periods of ill health he was admitted to BMH Berlin where an entire floor would be shut off and secured for his treatment. In her book Tales of a Lady in Grey with a Touch of Scarlet Lt Col Rosemary Sutton remembers the nursing by QAs of Rudolph Hess. Rudolf Hess died on the 17 August 1987 by suicide at Spandau Prison. He asphyxiated himself with a cord attached to a window latch in a summer house within the prison. He was aged 93 years. He was called prisoner number seven of the Nuremberg Trials. Another British Military Hospital connection with Rudolph Hess was when his aircraft crashed in Britain which led to his capture. This was near Eaglesham in Renfrewshire Scotland. There was a temporarily emergency hospital for the services here and the servicemen patients went to the downed aeroplane and collected souvenirs. There is a photograph in the collection of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow showing some British army patients placing the swastika from the plane wreckage onto their barrack block wall. This hospital was formerly the Mearnskirk tuberculosis convalescence hospital and after the war and the last Navy patients left in 1946 the hospital returned to its original function though as the incidence of tuberculosis reduced the building and staff turned to other specialities such as the care of patients with polio and then elderly care. Photographs of BMH Berlin The photograph below is how BMH Berlin looks now. It is a the cardiac treatment centre for Berlin, The Paulinenkrankenhaus. See www.paulinenkrankenhaus.de View more Photographs of Berlin. Do you know the address for BMH Berlin or have directions to get to BMH Berlin? If so please contact QARANC.co.uk so that we can add this info to the page. Thank you! The Real Tenko The latest book about British Army nurses and nursing describes a dark chapter in the history of the QAs. The Real Tenko: Extraordinary True Stories of Women Prisoners of the Japanese by Mark Felton is an account of the fall of the Far East to Japan. It comprehensively covers war atrocities performed by the Japanese troops to women stationed in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong. This included Sisters of the QAs who were stationed in hospitals such as BMH Bowen Road Hong Kong and BMH Singapore. Read the Qaranc.co.uk review or Buy Now with free delivery available. View more British Army Nursing Books - with free delivery available. If you would like to contribute to this page, suggest changes or inclusions to this website or would like to send me a photograph then please e-mail me. The photos and pictures on this page have been kindly sent to us for inclusion on this page. If you would like to contribute photographs then please contact us. For the official Army QARANC webpage please go to www.army.mod.uk/home.aspx For the QARANC Association website please go to www.army.mod.uk/army-medical-services/qaranc/9884.aspx ******************************************* Help Needed** A reader of Qaranc.co.uk is researching the exhumation of Heinrich Himmler in Luneberg, Germany circa 1945-46. He thinks that two nurses from the QAIMNS attended the exhumation due to the poor state of health of Walter Schellenberg. He would like to learn if any of the nurses kept a diary of the events leading up to the exhumation or sent any personal letters home to friends or family that may have provided an insight into Walter Schellenberg and the exhumation. Please contact Qaranc.co.uk if you have any information. Qaranc.co.uk have recently learnt about two former Military Hospitals that we would like to write about. These are the British Military Hospital at Wuppertal in Germany and BMH Benghazi. If you know any information, would like to share your memories or have photographs that we can use on the site then please contact Qaranc.co.uk A reader is writing an article about the demise of the Military Hospital for the RAMC Magazine and seeks some help. There was, in Kuala Lumpur, a hospital called BMH Kinrara. He would like to know when it opened and closed, what happened to the buildings and the staff. He thinks that Kinrara closed as Terendak opened and that the staff were transferred across to 34 Company RAMC? He would also like any information about the Military Maternity Hospital, Penang. If you can help then please contact Qaranc.co.uk There is a lovely photo of three QA Midwives from the 1960s about half way down on the Royal Herbert Hospital page. If you can help with information about the Maternity Unit in Woolwich or identify the QA Officers then please contact Qaranc.co.uk The BMH Dhekelia has new photos which includes a stunning picture of the demolition of the original building and some staff photos. The contributor would like some help with the date it was demolished and would love to hear from anyone who worked with her relative.			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