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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