YOUR excellent article on the wartime role of Calderstones as a military hospital recalled for me the similar function - though not of such a vast scale - of the now-gone Isolation Hospital near Baxenden.

My aunt, nurse Mary Shepherd, of the St John Ambulance, nursed the injured soldiers of the 1914 war there.

Most of the work was voluntary and sometimes we never saw her for weeks at a stretch.

My cousins and I, at very early ages, rolled miles of bandages.

We had a little machine like a little mangle to wind them on and we clamoured to use it.

Nurse Shepherd, who lived in Albert Street, Accrington, made the Ambulance Brigade her life.

She became superintendent and was one of the first to receive the St John of Jerusalem medal presented by the "king who never was", Edward VIII, at Buckingham Palace.

Her medals were on show at the ambulance headquarters in Ormerod Street but, sadly, were stolen a few months ago.

MONA COWELL, Blackburn.

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