It was clear that it was going to be fought on land, sea, and air. When the Imperial Defence Committee calculated that for every ton of explosives dropped from enemy bombers there would be 72 casualties there was a discrete panic. This meant that in the first two months of the war there could be as many as one million casualties. How could the hospitals cope with this demand ?

The governments answer was to organise a national system. Bearing in mind that you cannot charge casualties who have been bombed it was decided to make it free. They also recognised the need to have health care for workers as well as casualties, otherwise production and morale would suffer.

The Emergency Hospital Scheme, started in 1939 and funded by the government provided the solution. An American, Harry Eckstein summed it up after the war, ‘the British socialised medical services simply because of the deplorable state of the old medical service’.

In Kent there were dozens of new prefabricated wards built. Several hospitals had new operating theatres and for the first time there was an emergency ambulance service in all the large towns.

The system of free health care started with people in the services (like Mrs Claridge whose memories are recorded on page 32) and was then extended to civilians. When Beveridge produced his report in 1942 proposing a ‘free national health service’ his ideas were greeted with enthusiasm by a population who had already experienced some of the benefits through the Emergency Hospital Scheme.