Wounded D-Day soldiers – and their gratitude to the kindness of the people of the West Midlands

Doreen Carr will never forget the generosity of the people of Wolverhampton who met stretcher-bearers of wounded soldiers and sailors as they arrived for emergency treatment after the D-Day landings.

Hundreds came to the city’s Royal Infirmary, which in the pre-NHS days was one of the richest and best-funded in the country, after he was wounded in Normandy.

And when they arrived, clutching x-rays and documents, they found themselves welcomed with open arms by a grateful town as people flocked to give them cigarettes, chocolate, eggs and soap which they were to use sparingly at ration or to manage. World War II took its toll.

Mrs Carr was just 20 when she worked as an £18-a-year nurse at the Royal Hospital, which today stands empty and awaits redevelopment as a Tesco superstore.

Nurse Boddy, her maiden name, had worked with her colleagues to clean up the hospital, sending home any civilian patients well enough to transfer those who weren’t to nearby New Cross.

Along with her colleagues, she was among the first medical professionals to use penicillin to treat the wounded after the drug became available during the war.

The top floor of the hospital was off-limits in case of any bombing by German planes.

“All the beds were cleaned and made ready to receive the wounded soldiers and naval personnel who had come straight from the Normandy beaches through a hospital in Guildford, Surrey,” Ms Carr said during an interview in 2014, when she was 90 .

“The approach taken with the administration of penicillin was critical, especially when it came to the correct timing between injecting doses.

“We had to go round the beds in exactly the same order, injecting the men at exact regular intervals. It was quite different from what happens today.”

The aftermath of D-Day was also responsible for Nurse Boddy meeting her future husband, to whom she had been married for almost 65 years.

Private George Carr was one of the men brought to Wolverhampton for treatment.

He was with the Inns of Court Regiment and had been one of the first on the beach, just west of Graye-sur-Mer, only to be wounded when an 88mm gun opened up, hitting the Daimler armored car he was in.

The driver died on the spot. The lieutenant in the vehicle lost a leg and died shortly afterwards on the beach. Private Carr suffered leg and arm injuries.

And when he arrived in Wolverhampton it was Nurse Boddy who recorded his details.

But it wasn’t love at first sight.

“Five and a half years later, we got married,” says Ms Carr. “But when we first met, it was a bloody nuisance. He was not eating anything and was very sick. And then he kept asking for impossible things.”

On D-Day alone, up to 3,000 Allied troops died. About 9,000 were injured or missing.

By the end of the Normandy campaign in August 1944, Britain, America and their allies had sent more than two million soldiers to France and suffered around 200,000 casualties, including 37,000 killed.

The Germans suffered much higher losses – 200,000 dead, wounded or missing and another 200,000 captured as prisoners of war.

Nurse Boddy, meanwhile, tended to the sick and wounded.

Doreen had come to Wolverhampton from London in 1941 so she could train as a nurse.

She had family connections to the city as her grandfather, William Boddy, had a shop in Queen Square where he designed furniture and did theater seat restoration work.

Nurse Boddy specifically sought midwifery training when she came to the city, but her role after D-Day was to deal with young men who needed care after their wounds in Normandy.

Although Wolverhampton changed the course of Nurse Boddy’s life, it was the people who turned out to thank the returning wounded soldiers, who she wants to pay tribute to today.

“We were preparing the hospital for the soldiers who had been taken from the beach to Guildford,” says Mrs Carr.

“Those who needed immediate life-saving operations were treated in Guildford. Many others were sent to Wolverhampton by train on 9 July, three days after D-Day.

“There were so many of them – all from the army and navy. I didn’t see anyone from the air force. There were so many regiments “There were regiments I had never even heard of.”

Word quickly spread through Wolverhampton that the city was about to do its part to get these wounded Tommies back on their feet or try to ease their pain after fighting hard to turn the tide of the war.

“The Bush Telegraph alerted the people of Wolverhampton that a train was due to arrive at around 6pm on the Friday after D-Day, bringing the first casualties,” Ms Carr recalled.

“In those days, everything was in short supply – cigarettes, chocolate, eggs – even soap. However, people put these things on stretchers by bringing in patients.

“The love and kindness all around was palpable, as was the pain felt by so many who had been on the beaches and seen so many others injured and dead.”

The young nurse was stunned by the generosity.

“The things they gave were so few because of rationing. People were queuing for hours at a pharmacy for soap,” she says.

“We have been at war for so long. No one had anything to lend. But they did not hesitate to give these things to these soldiers, none of whom they knew, and many of whom would not have been from anywhere near Wolverhampton.

“On the eggshells, some people had written little messages saying thank you or wishing the soldiers and sailors a get well soon. They had so little. But what they had, they gave in gratitude to these brave men.

“They knew that D-Day created the possibility that the war would soon end.”

A mother of three, Ms Carr was brought up in Finchley in London and now lives in Lewisham. But she was compelled to share her memories of the generosity of the people of Wolverhampton towards wounded soldiers.

“The kindness didn’t stop there,” says Ms Carr, when those fit enough to receive the ‘blues’, the uniform to wear outside the hospital, went into town, no one would let them pay for anything . Food and drink had always been paid for when they went to pick up the tab.

“It didn’t matter if they were going to a pub for a beer or a cafe for a scone or a cup of tea.

“Whatever they wanted, someone else would insist on paying for it. The other soldiers who were too sick to leave the hospital were green with envy. I’m sure men all over the country will remember this episode in Wolverhampton history, as I do, one of the nurses at The Royal who receives these boys.”