{"id":243,"date":"2015-09-23T13:46:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T13:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/?p=243"},"modified":"2022-04-13T14:06:50","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T14:06:50","slug":"d-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/d-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiff Medical Students’ Contribution to D-Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
We recently came across some interesting records in the Archive which can tell us something about Cardiff students\u2019 contribution to the Normandy Landings.<\/h5>\n

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On February 22nd 1944, the Ministry of Health sent a letter to \u201cAll Deans of Medical Faculties and Schools in England and Wales,\u201d a copy of which has been preserved in the Senate Minutes of the Welsh National School of Medicine, Oct 1943 \u2013 Sep 1944 [Ref.: UWCM\/CM\/1\/3\/12]. This letter indicates that the country would shortly be facing a heightened state of emergency, explaining that it would be \u201cnecessary in the near future\u201d for medical services to limit the number of civilian patients \u2013 a step that was taken to \u201cfree gradually a considerable number of beds for the admission of casualties\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The letter expresses the Minister of Health\u2019s wish that the disturbance to the education of medical students will be \u201cas slight as possible\u201d, but asks that \u201csuitable students be released, when the time comes, from their normal duties to help with the reception and care of casualties, to join mobile surgical teams or to act as reinforcements to other hospitals.\u201d Students posted to other hospitals would be given board and lodging and would be paid \u00a31 a week \u201cduring this exceptional period.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Annual Report of the Welsh National School of Medicine, July 31st 1943 \u2013 June 30th 1944 [Ref.: UWCM\/ER\/1\/1\/13] reports that these measures prescribed by the Ministry of Health of mobilising medical students were directly related to the plans for the Normandy Landings. It reports that, \u201cAt the request of the Ministry of Health, in connection with \u201cD\u201d Day, students were posted to various emergency hospitals throughout South Wales and Monmouthshire for emergency duty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardiff\u2019s medical students, along with so many others, were clearly expected to play an active role in the emergency response to D-Day. The Annual Report concludes that the roles they took on in the immediate aftermath were of \u201cvalue both to the hospitals concerned, and their own instruction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We recently came across some interesting records in the Archive which can tell us something about Cardiff students\u2019 contribution to the Normandy Landings. On February 22nd 1944, the Ministry of […]","protected":false},"author":723,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-institutionalarchive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WM6Y-3V","meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/723"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/cuarm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}