NEW ZEALAND ARMY AT HOME.

Matamata Record, Volume III, Issue 114, 9 January 1919, Page 4

NEW ZEALAND ARMY AT HOME.

Brockenhurst Auxiliary Hospital. (By H. T. B. Drew, 2nd Lieutenant). Balmer Lawn, the auxiliary hospital to the main Brokenhurst hospital, set apart for the nose, eye, gas and shell cases, is about a mile from Brockenhurst. The building is a spacious four-storied mansion (once a hotel) standing alone like many fine tourist hotels of Great Britain and Europe. It has fine grounds, now all cultivated and producing vegetables and flowers, with greenhouses that are a blaze of colour. It is peaceful and very still about here, and in the evenings, with the sinking to rest of the summer’s sun over the edge of the forest, a holy calm seems to settle upon this woodland scene. No better place could be selected for shell-ehock cases, which require under the new treatment absolute detachment from any noise or bustle. Here the two - hundred - odd patients have quite as good a time as those at the main Brockenhurst institution. The nose, eye and gas cases have special treatment; but one’s greatest sympathy goes out to those terrible wrecks that shell-shock has wrought. You see them in the early stages, lying mute and helpless, unable sometimes to recognise their best friends; staring up, awful, at the slightest noise—every sound is a gun. Then absolute quiet and rest and nourishing food gradually do their work, and recovery slowly comes. But afterwards, for long periods, men will break out pitiably into palsied shivering at any undue excitement. Yet even this goes in time. We have a most capable physician here, who has made these cases his special study, and whose treatment is very successful; and the matron and her staff are specially selected. These bed cases, as at Brockenhurst, have their little piles of fancy work handy—all except the worst of the shell-shock cases. Billiard tables and all the usual attractions for the men are available in huts erected outside the main building. OFFICERS’ HOSPITAL. Another spacious hotel of much the same type is Forest Park, the officers’ hospital, with grounds and gardens laid out on scientific lines, under the Principal Medical Officer, Major Hogg, and producing almost enough vegetables for the hospital, and certainly enough flowers. Greenhouses, conservatories, and cucumber-frames are amongst the stock in trade, yet when we took this place over it was practically a wilderness. Tomatoes and cucumbers are grown with the greatest success. Here on the grounds are croquet and tennis lawns, miniature golflinks, and Badminton nets; and inside are billiard-tables, so that the patients not disabled are always kept going at something. The people about the district are also very kind to our officers, and do their best in offers of entertainment. The spacious building itself is very suitable, and further ward accommodation is provided outside. “You can’t keep officers tidy!” was the lament of the P.M.0.; but there were no distressing evidences of this about the place. Certainly everything looked extremely comfortable — warm fires, cosy arm-chairs, rugs in plenty, and nice thick carpets. X-ray apparatus and operatingtheatre are on the latest pattern. At this hospital are also taken officers from the aerodrome adjacent, and any casualties also from the Imperial bombing-school at Lyndhurst. When convalescent, New Zealand officers are sent to Avon Tyrrell, a place that lives in the memory, where, basking in the sun, roaming through the forest, playing golf or tennis, entertained by charming ladies, or in shooting parties in the forest, the patient’s return to perfect health is all too rapid. Avon Tyrrell is the country home of Lord and Lady Manners, and these kindly people and others care very devotedly and entertain very thoroughly our officers who are fortunate enough to be sent there.