Page 29 - QARANC The Gazette Spring 2023

January 1950. While fewer in pages, the editions in those early years were more frequent, at every two months. There was also an Army Medical Services magazine from 1927, which would also have recorded the exploits of the QAs.
Jason, who lives in Camberley, not far from the Museum, has been its director since November 2015. He hails from Truro and once worked at the Royal Navy dockyard in Plymouth in a civilian capacity. Why the interest in museums? He revealed: “When I was a boy, my dad used to take me to the Royal Cornwall Museum and they had an Egyptian mummy, which is still there today, and fascinated me.” He read Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, before making a career in museums.
War is a sort of petri dish and out of that crucible comes other things
Jason said: “Ancient cultures like the Romans and the Egyptians, after their battles, treated the injured. As battlefield equipment and techniques have become more lethal, so medicine and healthcare have had to adapt and innovate. War is a sort of petri dish and out of that crucible comes other things. Take World War One for example, civilian doctors enlisted, experienced things, and brought their innovations back to civilian practices. So military medicine isn’t this sort of esoteric thing, it’s something that comes back into civilian practice.”
The original RAMC museum was at Church Crookham, and in the early 1960s it moved to Keogh barracks. In 2003, then Director Peter Starling successfully applied for National Lottery funding to transform the building into what it is today.
However, the Defence Medical Training Centre left Keogh Barracks in 2013 and moved to Whittington. Rather than be camp followers, the Museum’s trustees have set a strategic direction of coming off a base altogether and “into the great big commercial world,” as Jason describes it. With 4 Medical Regiment and 22 Field Hospital left or leaving there will soon be no medical connection with Keogh Barracks, so the time is right to relocate in the next few years.
Jason said the Museum is always open to receiving new donations, artefacts (they buy items as well) and are open to anybody who wants to come research nursing history or family history that relates to Army nursing – “We are the QA corps’ museum, and we are here for people to come and make use of us.”
He adds cheekily, “If people want to come and volunteer, we’re always happy to have that discussion as well!”
The Museum of Military Medicine is located at Keogh Barracks, Ash Vale, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU12 5RQ. Telephone: Civilian 01252 868820. Find out more at www.museumofmilitarymedicine.org.uk