Gallery Two
The Photographs and Letters of Lt/Capt Morris Drogin.
Lt/Capt Morris Drogin was the supply officer at the 107th US General Hospital at Kington. He wrote regularly to his parents, Mr and Mrs Louis Drogin in Bayonne, New Jersey and his letters provide a unique record of life at the hospital. As well as documenting his impressions of Kington and the war, his letters contain fascinating information about how the hospital was run, the wounded that he met, the ambulance trains that arrived, and the work of the medical personnel.
He was also a keen photographer and took over 40 pictures of the hospital and his stay in England. These are the only photographs we have of the hospital in use. They cover a range of topics from general views of the installation, to the staff Christmas Party and five images of the wounded being unloaded at Kington Station. Some are reproduced below, and others are available by searching for Drogin in type ‘photo’ on the collections page. 
Both his letters and photographs from that time were kindly donated to the project by the Drogin family. Susan Drogin, his daughter, got in touch with us via this website and sent the images and the letters. In addition, his son, Bob, read out the letters and you can listen to them in this gallery. We are very grateful to Susan, Bob and the Drogin family for their significant contribution to this project and our understanding of Kington Camp.
Extracts from the Drogin letters
Extracts from some of Morris Drogin’s letters are provided here, along with their associated audio clip. To listen to all his letters, simply search for Drogin under ‘Audio’ in the collections page.
21 October 1944 Dear Folks, It rained again today as if that were anything new around here. Our patient population is going up. We’ve got the boys coming out of Germany and around where the fighting is the heaviest. Some of these guys have been wounded several times and been back several times to England. There’s one fellow I spoke to – He got five machine bullets in him on D-day. When he hit the beach he started advancing and then dove for a fox hole when the started shooting. He got his leg caught in barbed wire and before he could get it down he got five bullets in it. So they brought him back to England where he was in a hospital until September. He went back to France and got hit again right away and is back in a hospital. There’s another Sergeant here carrying his helmet as a souvenir. It’s got a hole on top where a bullet when [sic] in one side and out the other missing him and killing the man next to him. There are a lot more first hand accounts you’re not permitted to write about. Everything is okay otherwise. Morris
29 October 1944 Dear Folks, We had a Halloween dance last night. They called it a costume affair so the nurses could wear their evening gowns. We had a band made up of enlisted men from our detachment and a couple of patients. The piano player came in on crutches. He used to be a professional player. We also had some red cross entertainment. Say, see if you can figure out a way to send some scotch whiskey over. Wrap it up in the Bayonne Times or something. Also remember about a cheap pocket watch until I can figure out some way to get mine fixed here. There’s no need to send food packages any more because we serve coffee and sandwiches at the Officers Club every night. We’re getting another hospital train in a couple of days so things ought to be humming again full blast for a while until we clean it up. When we get a bad one in we have surgery going full blast. We have four operating rooms. Most of the work is minor like resetting broken limbs and taking out shrapnel. It’s amazing the percentage that leave here in perfect shape and go back to duty. The weather is still the same. It rains at least a half dozen times a day and the sun shines in between. I wear those boots I bought in Kilmer regularly now. They’re warm on the feet and I also have a heavy waterproof field coat to keep the dampness out. Morris
11 November 1944 Dear Folks, I’m writing from my office. It’s 7 o’clock at night raining like hell, its cold out, and we have to unload a hospital train in an hour. It’s also Saturday night and we were supposed to have a dance to-night which was called off. It’s going to be a job to keep the litters and blankets dry and the patients warm until we get them in. My job is to provide all the linen blankets and litters and supply the train so when they pull out they can pick up another load in the morning. We have a good system worked out. A medical officer gets on the train about 25 miles out and runs through the train. He makes a rapid examination of the man’s injury from the record fastened on him and fastens a ward number to him depending on the type of wound he has. At the station he is carried off and put in an ambulance, four to an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Here they carry him from the ambulance direct to the ward assigned on the tag. It works very rapidly. We send MP’s down into town and put them at every crossroad so the ambulances can shoot through. I’ll be finished by 10 o’clock but the doctors will probably work a lot longer until every serious case has been taken care of. Morris.
6 January 1945 Dear Folks, I see by the last letter I got that there are plenty of ambulances going thru Bayonne. The reason for that is they got so crowded here that they cut down the hospitalization time for transfer to the Zone of the Interior (ZI to us). It used to be that if a patient required 6 months or more hospitalization he would ZId now it’s been cut to 90 days in order to get more bed space here. Right now I’m listening [sic] a beautiful German propaganda station. We listen every night between 630 and 730. It’s an English program designed as entertainment. They play popular American music interspersed with distorted news items. They do it so cleverly that its hard to regard it as propaganda which I gather is their intent. We enjoy it and get a kick out of it. They have a midnite program. The announcer says “Listen to our midnite program if you have insomnia and enjoy our music so you’ll feel less mad at our ack-ack gunners who keep you awake.” They call Churchill Minstrel Churchill. They capitalize and keep repeating about the shortages and rationing in the states or how we’re all fighting for Russia. Every time there’s a strike they capitalize on it. Since Montgomery’s appointment they’re yelling that Montgomery and Eisenhower are fighting and that Montgomery will get his job. They had a blood collecting team here the last two days. They might have trouble getting blood at home since the war workers are too busy and figure it’s all over anyway, but here wounded soldiers got out of bed and came over to the collecting point in wheelchairs and on crutches to give blood. They appreciate what it can do. Your mail that you’re sending by Air Mail is taking a month to get here. V-Mail still takes half time if anyone is interested. I’m enclosing a money order for $100.00. Morris
28 January 1945 Dear Folks, We’re in the midst of a beautiful weather spell. It snowed for several days during the week, then the temperature went down close to zero. It may not seem much to you back home but here it’s rugged. There’s no thermostat to push up. When I get to the office at 8 the boys are building fire. I keep my heavy coat, gloves and scarf on until at least 9. Then it’s a matter of staying near the fire. Coal comes in a bucket from a coal pile. Kindling woods comes from crates which we save. Up in the quarters we sit around the fire or climb under the blankets. The water pipes froze and there was no hot water in the latrine. I shaved down at the office by heating a pot of water on the stove. The toilet in the office froze and we built a fire under it. Our fire usually goes out during the night and it’s rough climbing out of bed in the morning. The nurses on night duty were wear heavy field jackets and a sort of ski pants with a woolen lining and regular G.I. shoes. Don’t send any more stuff in cans. I have to re-distill it in the lab to play safe. I distilled a fifth yesterday and we killed it last night. It came out pretty good. Looked like gin but tasted good. Next time send it in the bottle in a loaf of bread well packed. It’s been coming through o-kay that way. Using V-Mail speeds up delivery quite a bit. The last two letters took less than 2 weeks. Air-Mail used to take close to a month. In a package enclose small cans of any kind of meat. No fish. Boned chicken is always good. Morris.
22 March 1945 Dear Folks, We got a train in yesterday of guys that were hit up in Germany the day before. Some of those were back in England that night. Pretty good evacuation. We got some nice first hand information on what’s going on up on the Rhine bridgehead. Those boys were really in tough shape. We had 47 scheduled for the operating room this morning. As a whole though casualties are going down. The worst was during November, December and January when the armies were tied down. From what we can see once they start moving casualties go down. One thing we’re glad to see gone with the coming of spring is trench foot. There was an awful lot of it during the winter, and most of them had to be sent home. They’ll never be any good again in cold climate. There were a lot of high ranking officers in yesterday’s bunch. It shows that the officers are right up there at the front with their men….Regards, Morris.
2 May 1945 Dear Folks, We’re back in business again. For a while it looked like we were going to the continent, but I guess the way things are going changed that. These casualties we got yesterday came from around Munich and Czechoslovakia. One thing I learned, the Russian civilians that are freed join the American army. One officer said his outfit could not have advanced as they did without these Russian civilians. They were moving so fast that reinforcements could not catch up with them and every Russian has had some military training and can handle a gun, and they all want to kill Germans. We also have some repatriated prisoners of war who were released when the American armies overran their camps. We’ll probably have lots more. We all expect the war to end within several days. A directive came out to-day declaring a 2 day holiday for the army for V day. If you’re on leave you get 2 extra days added on. If it’s necessary to be on duty you get it as soon as possible after, but everyone will get 2 days. I’m going on leave this week and intend to go to Edinburgh and be there on V-day. I was supposed to be on leave this week but it was cancelled when we were alerted for a hospital train. Regards Morris.
7 May 1945 Edinburgh, Scotland. Dear Folks, Just heard the news that it’s all over. I was in the movies and when I came out there seemed to be more people on the street than usual and they seemed too cheerful. A vendor on the corner was selling victory flags. I’m in the Red Cross now and it’s very quiet here. No one seems outwardly excited but I guess inside everyone feels good. My leave now will be automatically extended by 48 hours. A directive came out last week saying that V-day and V-day plus 1 are off days and troops on leave get a 48 hour extension. This city is really an international city. It’s full of Polish troops, Norwegians, American and dominion troops. The Poles however don’t look too happy. The pubs here are going to keep the same hours closing at 9:30 PM so there won’t be drinking like New York but we’ve got a bottle of scotch for the occasion. This city was still blacked out last night. I hope they put the lights on to-night. I’m sorry I didn’t go to London. I would like to be in London today. I’m not even going to try to guess where we go from here. There’s no way of predicting. One thing I’m sure of whatever happens it won’t be too bad. As a Captain I have to get a good job if they break our outfit up. I’m going to try to mail this letter thru an MP. There’s no U.S. post office here and we can’t use civilian mail. I’m going to listen to the radio now. Morris.
20 May 1045 Dear Folks, It begins to appear that we won’t be residing here for any length of time. I don’t know where we’re going but we’re going, that seems to be a certainty. We’re closing shop that’s all I can say in fact that’s all I know. This life has its good points. I wouldn’t bet a dime on where we’ll be a month from now. When you send laundry out now you hope you’ll get it back. All you have to look forward to this summer is the beach at Belmar and I see an ocean cruise ahead of me. By the way I hope my summer clothes are still there and clean. Either way I’ll need them and not for England either. It never gets warm enough here for khaki clothes. I’ve collected so much junk I dread the thought of packing. I had half the hospital packed and shipped to the depot over a month ago when we were put back on the active list again and I had to draw some of it back. I hope this is the last time. Be seeing you. Morris.
Unloading the Wounded at Kington Station
The Drogin collection contains six images of Kington Station when a troop train arrived. Although the images are grainy, they depict the ambulances in the car park outside, the train arriving, unloading the wounded from the trains (note the stretchers stacked on the platform), and loading them into the back of the waiting ambulance trucks. The ambulances then drove straight to the camp, unloading the wounded to selected wards depending upon the nature and severity of their injuries.
