8th_Europe_Report -- 21_old_new5.jpg
On Tuesday morning we rendezvous with Alain and Monique in the parking lot below
the famous 1857 stairway down to the commercial harbor. The take us in
their car to the location of where the US Navy Base Hospital No. 5 once stood.
In a July 1918 H.S. Wheeler wrote to his sweetheart (later his wife) Doris that
he had been a patient in this hospital recovering from an appendicitis
operation. Now, thanks to the expert detective work of Monique and Alain,
we know much more about this hospital (see the lower portion of
this site &
photo of hospital entrance). To support the US war effort, an
abandoned nunnery was was organized, staffed and equipped by Philadelphia's
Methodist Episcopal churches. Sadly, it is only a parking lot today and
not a subject of photographic interest. This site, however, does relate to
7 photos scattered throughout St.Clare's album. His Photo #006 we now know
is the beginning of a US Navy funeral procession leaving the entrance of
Hospital No. 5. We will study the buildings shown on the left of the old
photo to see if any match those shown in the new photo bottom-left. (For
more on US Naval Base Hospital No. 5 see this
Naval History page.) For another online photo from this era
CLICK HERE, linked to a "Philadelphia,
The World War I Years" page which, among many other topics, has a section
entitled, "Philadelphia Hospitals, Doctors, Nurses and Staff in The Great War",
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