Library Collections: Document: Full Text


The Disabled Soldier

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: 1919
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26

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The building itself is at Byculla. It is splendidly appointed with sitting-rooms, dormitories, and work shops, and Is surrounded by beautiful grounds where the pupils take their exercise or spend pleasant hours conversing or reading. Spacious verandas afford them ample space for games and amusements. In the well-ventilated dormitories each man has beside his bed his own lockup in which he keeps his personal belongings.

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Queen Mary's School affords the men every opportunity to take their training in comfort and without financial worry. Clothes, bedding, and food are supplied. To those who have to come from a distance return railway tickets and traveling expenses are given. When a man finishes his course, he is supplied free with a set of tools for his trade.

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Trained men are placed In Bombay and other industrial centers in workshops and factories; with regiments or the army clothing department as tailors; in the mechanical transport service as chauffeurs; in the government dockyards, ordnance factories, and arsenals as turners, fitters, machinemen, engine drivers, and ammunition box makers.

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Artificial limbs are furnished to cripples at one of the hospitals in Bombay, while in hospitals at Dehra, Dun, and Mussoorie reconstructive medical treatment is provided for the benefit of disabled men.

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In addition to the employment department of the Queen Mary's Technical School there have been formed at the various centers in India bureaus that take care of the problem of placing disabled men in suitable employment.

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In Richmond Park, Surrey, England, on a magnificent twelve acre site, stands the South African Military Hospital, especially built for permanently disabled South African soldiers. The South Africa Union, without facllities for carrying on the necessary work of re-education, found it advisable to establish on British soil a hospital and training center for the disabled men of her own forces.

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Nothing is left undone to make the disabled soldier feel at home in his new quarters in Richmond Park. Corridors and patients' departments of the hospital are designated after familiar places and streets in South Africa. Thus, the main entrance opens into "Adderley Street," leading into ''Market Square" in Cape Town, while the corridors are named "Commissioner Street," "Maitland Street," and "Sunnyside." The hospital buildings were designed to resemble South African colonial timber-framed dwellings of a type familiar to the disabled man. The day rooms are named after well-known clubs, "The Ramblers," "The Wanderers, "and "The Dustpan." The majority of the beds have been endowed with money collected by school children in South Africa.

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One of the hospital buildings is a large concert hall, used at times for church services, for entertainments for the patients, and for classes in typewriting, bookkeeping, shorthand, and motion picture operating. Adjacent to the concert hall and established in connection with the hospital, are the practical workshops or vocational training classes. Here disabled soldiers are taught to become metal turners and fitters, tool makers, brass finishers, coppersmiths, tinsmiths, engine drivers and attendants, acetylene welders, electrical fitters for power, light, telephones, and bells, cinematograph operators, electrical testers, meter readers, dynamo and switchboard attendants, sub-station and accumulator attendants, motor car drivers and repairers, carpenters and joiners, cabinet-makers, bootmakers and boot repairers, clerks, storekeepers and timekeepers, bookkeepers, accountants, salesmen, secretaries, and managers. The vocational training staff consists of nine experienced instructors under an educational organizer. The workshops are registered by the city guilds and the classes are inspected periodically by experts.

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When a man enters the hospital he is classified under one of three headings: (1) likely to become fit for further military service; (2) doubtful if he can be fitted for further military service; or (3) unlikely to be fit for further military service. If he falls under one of the first two classes, he is given curative treatment only, to return him to active service as soon as possible. If he comes under the third heading, his case is investigated to determine whether he will require vocational training. If it is found that the does, he training is begun as early as possible.

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The hospital and vocational staffs cooperate as closely as possible, for it has been found that the interest of the disabled soldier can be stimulated in some type of work long before he is well enough to leave his bed.

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According to Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton: "Under the South African scheme the men start earlier than in any other institution in the United Kingdom, as this hospital is the only primary hospital which has Vocational Training Classes established in connection with it." This statement strikes the keynote of the South African plan. The fact that work is going on about him tends to hearten the disabled man; he is led to believe that he, too, can learn a trade. His training is begun gradually, under strict medical supervision. As soon as he is able to sit up in bed he is given typewriting or some light recreational work to do. This fosters the desire to continue a course of training.

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