Page 6 - The Princess Mary's Hospital 124pp book.pdf

The story of this hospital’s lifetime of service is partially drawn from extracts from both hospitals’ Operational Record Books3, whether held at the National Archives in Kew or at TPMH4, as well as extracts from personal reminiscences, websites and other publications, including two previous histories5 of TPMH. These extracts give a fascinating insight into the role of a British military hospital strategically located at the junction of three continents and next to major international flashpoints with ongoing tension.
“Cyprus is, after all, a country sui generis at the meeting place of the three continents of the Old World, with an ancient civilisation and a long and complicated history. These conditions set racial, political and ecclesiastical problems of a specialised kind that had their counterpart, so far as British Colonial administration was concerned, only in the Palestine of the Mandate.” (Sir Harry Luke6)
3 Five Operational Record Books (F540s) for the years 1956–1960, and 1966–1980, are publicly accessible at the National Archives, Kew, having been released after a mandatory 30 years. These consist of monthly summaries of the unit’s activity, and are a standard requirement for all RAF units. www.raf.mod.uk/ahb/sourcesofinformation/ See Author’s Note in Bibliography for further details. These monthly summaries ceased to be collated at TPMH after 1995, possibly as a result of the transfer of responsibility for the hospital from the RAF to the Defence Secondary Care Agency in 1996.
4 Three Operational Record Books for the years February 1974 – December 1980 are currently held at TPMH but will be transferred to the Air Historical Branch for onward transfer to Kew when TPMH closes in 2013.
5 Flight Sergeant G H Cuthbert produced a history for the 35th anniversary in
1998, and Flight Lieutenant Karl Colehouse produced a history for the 40th anniversary in 2003. Both histories were looseleaf and only distributed locally. The author gratefully acknowledges both authors for inspiring him in
creating this 50th anniversary history, and particularly Flight Sergeant Cuthbert who kindly sent him numerous newspaper cuttings regarding TPMH as well as a copy of his history. Readers are referred to both histories and the file of laminated newspaper cuttings, all kept at RAF Akrotiri Museum, for idiosyncratic comments and further details about life in TPMH.
6 Sir Harry Luke, Cyprus, 1965. Sir Harry Luke, K.C.M.G., D.Litt., LL.D., was an Oxford classicist and administrator with a great love for Cyprus. He first visited Cyprus in 1908, on a “Grand Tour” of the Levant, and contrived to return as Private Secretary to the High Commissioner in 1911, going on to successively become an Assistant Secretary to Government, Commissioner of Paphos and later of Famagusta. He ended his official connection with Cyprus in 1920, though he nearly returned as Governor in 1938 (after serving as Lieutenant-Governor of Malta from 1930–1938), and he spent many winters and springs of his retirement on the island, before dying in Cyprus in 1969.
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