ISBN: 9781781320716    Publisher: SilverWood Books Year of publishing: 2012     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 208        

From the end of November 1943 to the middle of May 1944, the 56th General Hospital cared for American soldiers wounded and injured in nearby training camps. Thereafter, the 74th GeneralHospital took over and to the war's end it tended to Americans wounded in the battles on mainland Europe. After the Americans left in June 1945, the local council converted many of the buildings into dwellings to house people made homeless in the war, eventually accommodating more than 150 families and 500 people. By the late 1950s most families had moved out of the 'village' into new houses.In 1959 all buildings were demolished, and the land returned to the Tyntesfield Estate in 1960. This book tells of the work of the hospital, based on official documents, many wartime photographs and the stories of some of those involved, includinglocal people. It also portrays the post-warTyntesfield 'village', with memories of some of those who lived there.
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Michael Boyce was born in Stapleton, a suburb of Bristol, in 1936. He and his wife now live in a village in South Gloucestershire, his grown-up son and daughter having long since left the family home to set up their own. As a structural engineer, he worked for consulting civil engineers and latterly a construction company, and in the course of his work wrote many reports and a number of technical papers. In 1998 he set up his own structural engineering consultancy practice, eventually retiring in 2009. Like many men of his age, he lived his early years through the Second World War, and now enjoys reading about the politics of warfare and the exploits of those who fought in various conflicts. He remembers seeing ambulance convoys passing his home, carrying wounded to the American hospital at Frenchay, a few miles north of Bristol. Still living within a 'stone's throw' of the now NHS Frenchay Hospital, he read about its history, including the period when the Americans cared for their wounded, in a book written by a doctor who worked in the hospital after the war. Having always enjoyed writing, he believes that his wartime recollections, together with the Frenchay hospital history, provided the incentive to research the American hospital at Tyntesfield and its use after the war, and this book is the fruits of that research.
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