Promoted to Corporal

On the 15^th July 1915 Charles Henry Bush (My first cousin 3 times removed) was promoted to corporal in the 35^th Company of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC).

Born in Wimbledon in 1878, Charles had been mobilised from the Army reserve on the 5^th August 1914 and had arrived in France on the 20^th August. He had previously served with the RAMC in South Africa. During 1914 he had been stationed at No.9 General Hospital initially in Nantes and later in Rouen.

Charles was posted to New End Military Hospital, Hampsted at Christmas 1914, one of the new hospitals established to deal with the ever increasing number of casualties arriving back from France and Flanders.

New End Military Hospital

By May it was already treating 300 wounded soldiers, including those suffering from shell shock.

Charles' elder brother Alfred, a Regimental Sergeant Major with the Royal Army Medical Corps, was still stationed in Egypt attached to the the 1/4^th London Mounted Brigade. Both brothers had served together in South Africa and had been brought up in Wimbledon in the 1880's, their father Charles dying and their mother Caroline remarrying when they ere both young.