BMH Benghazi
British Military Hospital Benghazi Libya with BMH Benghazi photos:
Christmas 1957. The Ward Sister in the centre of the photograph is Lt Jean Grieve who, thirty years later, became the Commandant of the QA Centre. There is another photo of Lieutenant Grieve on the Military Hospital Wheatley page. If you can help identify the other nurse, then please contact me.
BMH Benghazi was located in this second largest city of Libya. BMH Benghazi closed in February 1968 when the British Government decided to close the units serving there as a result of the six day war in June 1967. In 1969 Muammar Gaddafi (Colonel Gaddafi) led a group of Libyan junior military officers in a revolt during a six day war against King Idris who was having medical treatment in Turkey and his nephew the Crown Prince Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi. The British Army was ejected from the Middle East as a result of this bloodless coup when the royal family was deposed. The Libyan Arab Republic was then set up.
British Military Hospital Benghazi Libya was a small unit with several wards and staffed by the RAMC and QARANC. Another nearby British Military Hospital was BMH Tripoli
Surviving Tenko: The Story of Margot Turner
details life at BMH Benghazi post Second World War. An extract reads:
We were kept so busy and were so understaffed that I used to occasionally relieve the theatre sister and always made myself on call for the theatre in case of emergency. I enjoyed keeping my hand in at a form of work in which I had formerly specialised - before my captivity.
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My PTSD assistance dog, Lynne, and I have written a book about how she helps me with my military Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety, and depression. I talk about my time in the QAs and the coping strategies I now use to be in my best health.
Along the way, I have had help from various military charities, such as Help for Heroes and The Not Forgotten Association and royalties from this book will go to them and other charities like Bravehound, who paired me with my four-legged best friend.
I talk openly about the death of my son by suicide and the help I got from psychotherapy and counselling and grief charities like The Compassionate Friends.
The author, Damien Lewis, said of Lynne:
"A powerful account of what one dog means to one man on his road to recovery. Both heart-warming and life-affirming. Bravo Chris and Lynne. Bravo Bravehound."
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This beautiful QARANC Poppy Pin Badge is available from the Royal British Legion Poppy Shop.
For those searching military records, for information on a former nurse of the QAIMNS, QARANC, Royal Red Cross, VAD and other nursing organisations or other military Corps and Regiments, please try Genes Reunited where you can search for ancestors from military records, census, birth, marriages and death certificates as well as over 673 million family trees. At GenesReunited it is free to build your family tree online and is one of the quickest and easiest ways to discover your family history and accessing army service records.
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Another genealogy website which gives you access to military records and allows you to build a family tree is Find My Past which has a free trial.
Dame Margot Turner was seconded to BMH Benghazi as temporary sister in charge and this was her first time in Africa. She describes the BMH Benghazi buildings as:
We had half an Italian hospital, which was on the outskirts of the town of Benghazi. Our Mess and Sisters' Quarters were across the road, opposite the hospital, and we had little bungalows with two Sisters in each. The Mess was hutted and the bungalows brick built. The hospital was supposed to be a hundred bedded, so we were very understaffed with only twelve Sisters. We had to put extra beds up, though, as we always had more than a hundred patients, who were all from British troops stationed in Benghazi. There was also a small hospital in Tobruk, with three Sisters.
We had the ordinary medical and surgical cases, road accidents and normal routine sickness cases that one always gets in a military hospital. We were certainly kept very busy but I found time to play quite a lot of tennis on the court attached to the Mess, and at the Officers' Club. And I started riding again in Benghazi. The horses weren't very good but an Army Riding Club was formed with the local ponies and or course there were plenty of places in which to ride.
If you would like to contribute any info, photographs or share your memories of BMH Benghazi then please contact me.
A reader wishes to know if when Torelli Barracks closed their hospital did the staff move to the new Wavell barracks in February 1955 just off the Benina Road, which was also known as the road to the Airport, or did they completely shut it down? He knows that 35 Coy Ambulance moved and he would like to know if there was a unit still there when the Ambulance Coy moved and if not when did the barracks close down or was it taken over by a Libyan regiment. If you can help then please contact me.
Former Royal Air Force Regiment Gunner Jason Harper witnesses a foreign jet fly over his Aberdeenshire home. It is spilling a strange yellow smoke. Minutes later, his wife, Pippa, telephones him, shouting that she needs him. They then get cut off. He sets straight out, unprepared for the nightmare that unfolds during his journey. Everyone seems to want to kill him.
Along the way, he pairs up with fellow survivor Imogen. But she enjoys killing the living dead far too much. Will she kill Jason in her blood thirst? Or will she hinder his journey through this zombie filled dystopian landscape to find his pregnant wife?
The Fence is the first in this series of post-apocalyptic military survival thrillers from the torturous mind of former British army nurse, now horror and science fiction novel writer, C.G. Buswell.
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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.
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The death of the Brotherhood will be avenged.
RAF gunner Jason Harper and a team of Special Air Service operators are enraged after the death of their brothers by a terrorist drone strike. They fly into south-eastern Yemen on a Black-op mission to gather intelligence and avenge the death of their comrades.
Can they infiltrate the Al-Queda insurgents' camp, stay undetected, and call down their own drone missile strike and get home safely?
Will they all survive to fight another day?
Operation Wrath is a free, fast-paced adventure prequel to the non-stop action The Fence series by military veteran author C.G. Buswell.
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