From 1914 to 1918, the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley of France was converted into a military hospital. Today, space is dedicated in the castle’s “Gallery of Domes” to its memory. It pays tribute to all those who helped treat the 2,254 soldiers who were wounded there during the four years of the Great War, the First World War.
Gaston Menier, senator of Seine-et-Marne, and owner of the Château de Chenonceau at the time, decided to take part in the national war effort and suggested to the Ministry of War that a temporary military hospital could be established in the castle, covering all the expenses himself.
He installed 120 beds in two rooms of the castle. On the ground floor, a highly efficient operating room was equipped with one of the first X-ray machines in the country. His daughter-in-law, Simone Menier, wife of his son George, was a staff nurse and administered the military hospital. She treated the wounded and actively collaborated with doctors and surgeons working on site until its closure on 31 December 1918.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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