Page 14 - The Princess Mary's Hospital 124pp book.pdf

SUEZ CRISIS
The scale of the EOKA conflict and its impact on the medical services in the RAF and Army hospitals during the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–1959 are perhaps better appreciated when one realises that during the Suez operation of 1956, more British troops died at the hands of EOKA in Cyprus than in fighting Nasser’s troops. There had been 174 separate bomb attacks on British military targets on the island since the beginning of August that year when military planning for Suez commenced (one of which severely damaged the Akrotiri runway and delayed the Suez invasion by two weeks)24. There were 23 deaths in Cyprus in November 1956 alone, one more than the total number of fatalities during the Suez operation25.
It was not just British servicemen who were cared for at the RAF hospital:
(January 1957) “Two EOKA terrorists were admitted on 18 January 1957. One had gunshot wounds of the chest and the other gunshot wounds of the left arm. The former was discharged on 28 January, 1957 and the latter remains in hospital.
Another EOKA terrorist was admitted on 23 January 1957 in a coma and was diagnosed as having an intracranial haematoma. Right sub-temporal decompression was carried out and a large sub-dural haematoma found. Patient died on 25 January 1957 without recovering consciousness.”
24 The Cyprus Conspiracy, p43.
25 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk–11743727
MILITARY MEDICINE IS NOT ALL SURGERY...
Clinical work at this hospital was not all trauma: the physicians had their dramas26, as did maternity:
The first delivery: (February 1957) “A WRAC Private was admitted during February with symptoms and signs suggestive of infective hepatitis. She was found to be about 30 weeks pregnant. After a few days her condition deteriorated suddenly, jaundice becoming much deeper with some peripheral cyanosis. Surgical induction of labour was carried out by Major Magner (BMH Nicosia27) and a live male child, of approximately 30–32 weeks gestation, was delivered, the first delivery at this hospital. Unfortunately, the baby never established adequate respiration and died about six hours after birth...”
26 Fortunately the physicians at RAF Akrotiri in 1956 did not have to deal with malaria, despite the peninsula, with its salt lake, being heavily infested with mosquitoes. The single unequivocally beneficial legacy of British rule in Cyprus has been the eradication of malaria in 1949 after a three year campaign spearheaded by the island’s chief health inspector, Turkish Cypriot Mehmet Aziz, and paid for from the Colonial Development Fund. Having previously been considered one of the most malarious places in the world, with around 10,000 cases of malaria each year, Cyprus became the first of the world’s malaria-infested countries to totally eradicate the disease from its shores, being declared malaria free in February 1950. Details from: Tabitha Morgan. Sweet and Bitter Island: A History of the British in Cyprus. Chapter 12: The Great Liberator 1945–55, p197. Cyprus issued two stamps to commemorate this, in its Malaria Eradication Campaign Issue of 14 May 1962.
27 BMH Nicosia: Built in 1941 as a temporary hutted hospital, with 200 beds, on a ‘kopje’ east of Nicosia, and originally known as 57 General
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