Emotional journey for family to on wartime field hospital Shropshire's doorstep - with video
The son of an American doctor who ran a field hospital near Whitchurch during the Second World War has paid an emotional visit to the country house where it was based after spotting a picture on the internet.
Dennis “Denny” Nicola made the near 5,000-mile journey from Portland in Oregon to visit Iscoyd Park after recognising the mansion – which is a popular wedding venue – from its website.
His father Lt Col Quintus Nicola, who died in 1972, had taken a large number of pictures at the site when he was executive officer in charge of the hospital toward the end of the war.
Watch rare World War II footage from Iscoyd Park:
Today, there is no trace of the hospital left, but Denny was able to recognise parts of the building from his father’s photographic archive. He was invited to stay at Iscoyd House by present owner Philip Godsal after Denny shared the pictures with him.
Denny brought his wife Lynda, daughters Stephanie and Jennifer, and their husbands Alex Ness and Jon Bletscher with him for the trip.
"I have been looking out and trying to imagine where the hospital would have been," he says, wistfully.
The wall he is sitting on is where just behind where the hospital's fire station once stood, and it was an old picture of this scene as it looked during the war which led to him making this emotional journey.
Denny, who is in Britain retracing his father's footsteps, says his father – a doctor who gave up his GP practice in California to help with the war effort – did not talk that much about the war when he was alive.
"Like many people who served in World War Two, he didn't talk about it very much," he says.
"He did a bit, I knew he was in charge of a hospital and I knew it was a place called Iscoyd House, somewhere in the country, and that it was next to a PoW camp, but I didn't know much more about it than that."
But he died in 1972, Quintus did leave behind remarkable archive of colour photographs he took while in Whitchurch – which were featured in the Shropshire Star on Monday. And it was from these pictures that Denny was finally able to solve the mystery of where he spent his time during the war.
"I saw a picture of the manor house which I was sure I recognised from one of the photographs, it was one of the fire station with the manor house in the background, and I then spent some time checking all the details, counting all the windows and things like that to make sure."
He then emailed his pictures to Iscoyd House's present owner, Philip Godsal, whose family have kept the estate – sometimes by the skin of their teeth – since 1843, who confirmed straight away that it was where the hospital that Quintus had been in charge of more than 70 years ago.
The American 82nd General Hospital was opened in the grounds of the estate on April 29, 1944, initially to deal with the flood of casualties after the Normandy landings. It employed 700 staff, and far from being the ramshackle improvised affair one might imagine, it was a properly constructed affair, and in its first six months it handled more than 4,000 US Army patients. But then from the end of September, 1944, its role changed, and it dealt mainly with German prisoners of war.
Philip was a child during the Second World War, and his father, Major Philip Godsal, served with the 52 Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry during the battle at Pegasus Bridge during the Normandy campaign. And Denny says learning about the the Godsal family's experiences, as much as spending time at the estate.
"I wasn't that emotional when I got here, but when I sat down and talked to Philip about what my father did, and what his family did, it did make me feel quite emotional," he says.
"Being here and talking to Philip and his family does make me grateful for my safety, and the life I am able to enjoy because of the sacrifices of those who fought in the war," he says.
"I had seen the photographs, and now I've seen the bricks and mortar, but it is also about two families, and the parts that they have played.
"The World War Two generation, there are not many of them left with us now, and we must remember what they did."
