Status Updates From Blitz Hospital: True Storie...

Letters to a soldier about his wife's infidelity - Shirley Jackson style - lead to his suicide:

'Investigations subsequently made by senior military personnel revealed that Frank's wife was indeed being visited once a week by a man[:] her father, who was calling by her house to check on her wellbeing[.] Frank had taken his life needlessly, all because of the malicious actions of an interfering neighbour.'

'Alien' nurses are banned from male wards in case they leak military secrets to Europe. Many matrons quietly ignore this regulation:

'These matrons often became the target of snide insinuations from other staff members. A porter at The London, for instance, was quite convinced that Matron arranged her washing on a line on the hospital roof in a certain fashion, in order to send messages to enemy aircraft.'

'Thus the first victims of war to be nursed in London sector hospitals were not the expected air raid victims from London but a mixture of British and French soldiers from the Dunkirk evacuation. However, for nurses who had languished for months in sector hospitals bandaging chair legs and doing menial cleaning work, the Dunkirk retreat was a welcome relief from their suffocating boredom.'

'Over a million cats and dogs were put down between September and December 1939[,] because pets were not allowed to enter public air raid shelters, and owners considered it a kindness to end their pets' lives rather than subject them to the air raids. Keepers at London Zoo had also been forced to destroy all poisonous snakes and spiders in case these escaped during the bombing raids.'