Chapter 3: Creating Community
Regional Centre for Healthcare during Political Turmoil
After the precarious difficulties brought about by the war, the hospital and its British administration slowly began to rebuild as they entered the 1960s. The British Military Hospital became one of the largest and most well-equipped hospitals in the Far East Command.
It not only supplied general medicine and service to local troops and families, but also had consultant specialists for eye, ear, nose, throat, and maxillofacial surgery; major and orthopaedic surgery; gynaecology and obstetrics; paediatrics, pathology, psychology, and psychiatry.
The Army Medical Services also underwent reorganisation in 1949. They fully incorporated the all-female Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS) into the army as a Corps, and renamed it the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC).
The QARANC was made up of commissioned army officers who supervised the training of state-registered nurses, midwives, and RAMC nursing orderlies.
By 1967, there were about 40 doctors and 66 QARANC officers, with an equivalent number of nurses-in-training, serving up to an average occupancy of 300 to 325 patients at any one time. The operating theatres were also under the supervision of QARANC nurses.
Ambulances parked outside the front porch of the hospital. The porch was later extended, and the old driveway became a waiting area for patients and visitors.
Then-Private Joyce Fowler, later known as Mrs. Joyce Bartrop, served at BMH Singapore and stayed at Elizabeth House in the late 1950s, witnessing its expansion that year.
Some patients, sheltered from the heat of battle, attempted to chip away at their boredom from ward confinement by betting on rather unusual stakes. Immunopathologist John Vivian Wells, an Australian doctor who had arrived in Singapore in 1963, remembered an incident of Gurkhas at an outpost in Sarawak being killed by a raiding party of insurgents.
In the days after, patients in the orthopaedic ward had bet on the number of insurgents neutralised until victory over the raiding party was declared.
Part One
The front porch of the hospital bore the coat of arms of the monarch of the United Kingdom. During its time under British administration, the coat of arms of King George VI and subsequently his daughter Queen Elizabeth II were displayed.
However, the 1950s and 1960s were tumultuous periods for regional politics around Singapore, where a spate of regional conflicts kept the hospital busy. In 1948, the Malay Peninsula became the site of a rising communist insurgency against British colonial rule.
The Malayan Communist Party (MCP), which had been key anti-Japanese resistance fighters during the war, were now aggressively pushing for a communist Malaya. Core leaders and guerillas armed themselves with hidden supplies of wartime weapons and retreated into the Malayan jungle.
In June 1948, they attacked three British plantation managers in Sungai Siput, Perak, and triggered a state of emergency in Malaya and Singapore that lasted 12 years.
Singapore became a base for Britain’s fight against the insurgency, with the BMH playing a major role in attending to the casualties of jungle warfare in the Malay states.
British medical services returned to a pre-war structure because of the emergency, with the BMH as the primary referral hospital for British Malaya, spreading web-like to four other military hospitals in Malaya and numerous other reception stations.
As it was the most well-equipped BMH in the region, with its range of facilities and medical expertise, cases beyond the abilities of up- country hospitals were sent to it for treatment. It was also the primary point of assessment for patients to be considered forevacuation to Britain.
A helipad was constructed at the hospital in 1954, reducing the time taken to transport soldiers out of the Malayan jungles from 96 hours to about 10 hours. QARANC nurse Private Joyce Fowler, who served in 1958, recalled how these helicopters would land in the football field behind the hospital for evacuation operations, indicating the arrival of more wounded patients. Heli-evac operations like these were a common sight at the hospital all the way into the 1960s.
Besides the emergency, the Indochina Wars were rocking the Southeast Asian region. Vietnam emerged from the First Indochina War in 1954 split into a communist-dominated north and US-backed south. However, North Vietnam desired to unify Vietnam under a single communist regime, and an armed struggle for its reunification began in 1959. While North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese armies had begun engaging in firefights with each other, active American combat forces only landed in Vietnam in 1965.
Britain was not directly involved in the war, and the American army had its own medical facilities for treating soldiers. However, the hospital still treated Australian and Gurkha casualties who were engaged to support South Vietnam, as well as victims of viral infections (like malaria) that occurred as a result of the insurgency’s time in the jungle environment. They were transferred down to the BMH from Vietnam for treatment.
Even though American soldiers were not patrons of the BMH’s medical service, they did visit Singaporean shores for their leaves. Corporal Edward Kelly, a dietitian who catered to the dietary needs of hundreds of hospital patients, recalled the enlightening time he had with them.
“They used to come down with, literally, bags full of dollars. In a matter of days, they would be broke. They would try to chat up the Queen Alexandra Royal Army nurses. But nothing ever really happened. These guys were having a hard time, and our job was to entertain them. They invited us to their ship. They had carveries, they had McDonald’s, or [their fast food] equivalent to McDonald’s, they had salad bars. They had all sorts. Even pool tables on a boat. I’ve never heard of that in my life. That was quite an incredible experience.”
The heli-pad on the football field at BMH Singapore, allowing for the swift transfer of new admissions into the hospital from regional sites of conflict. A ramp was built, leading to the Accident and Emergency unit.
While these regional conflicts did not directly involve Singapore, the country was facing its own rocky journey towards independence. In 1961, the idea of a merger between Singapore, the Federation of Malaya, and Britain’s other colonies in Borneo was suggested to secure independence and economic viability.
However, Indonesia’s president Sukarno rejected the prospect of this merger and launched an undeclared war called the Konfrontasi, or Confrontation, in January 1963 to prevent it from happening. This did not stop the formation of the Federation of Malaysia from being finalised in September that very year. As the Konfrontasi persisted, further complications with the merger arose when Singapore experienced one of its bloodiest communal riots in 1964. Two separate racial riots saw a total of 34 dead and 563 injured.
Motivated by the tension from these riots, the Indonesians intensified the conflict by staging further raids in Singapore and Malaysia. The Konfrontasi would last for three years until 1966. With these conflicts erupting around and within Singapore, the BMH saw an increase in local patients. The hospital also continued to deal primarily with military casualties who were transferred to the hospital together with their sick or wounded families.
“The orthopaedic ward was always full,” explained QARANC Private Elisabeth Saint Quentin, who began her service in this ward in 1966. She now goes by Elisabeth Gadsby. “It was a 60-bed ward. They had the main wards, which took about 40 beds, and the balconies would have extra beds down them.”
The hospital’s growing regional responsibilities meant new buildings were needed to cater to them. The sergeant’s mess and kitchen outbuilding were built between 1951 and 1953.
The Margaret, Elizabeth, and Alexandra houses were erected as billets for incoming QARANC nurses. An outpatient block (now Block 28) was built around 1965 as the number of patients and staff members within the hospital grew.
A map of BMH Singapore, drawn by then-Private Jane Hannick in 1970. Hannick, who later became Mrs. Jane Faccini, was billeted in Elizabeth House, alongside fellow QARANC nurses like Helen Cullen-Price and Olga Burkowski. Other billets for female nurses included Alexandra House and Margaret House, also named after British princesses.