Trace

At 00:01 on 5^th Dec 1942, this site became the US 67^th General Hospital, a World War Two evacuation facility, primarily constructed to receive casualties from the anticipated invasion of Europe, now known as D-Day.

Under Unit Director Lieutenant Roland Moore, over fifty Medical Officers and one hundred nurses of the 67^th General Hospital in Portland, Maine, alongside approximately five hundred enlisted men, mainly from Texas and Oklahoma, formed the original staff cohort.

This linking corridor connects that past to Musgrove’s present and future, with the remaining wartime buildings to your left, and the new state-of-the-art King’s Building, occupying an area which included the wartime Administration Building and the ‘Eisenhower Pine’, beyond this wall.

Artist Jon England spent time in these buildings prior to their demolition. In search of a subject to encapsulate their near 80 years of use, his attention was drawn to the heavily etched details of the door protector plates.

As the hospital goes through its daily rituals of cleansing, seeking to remove all ‘traces’ of activity, these little-noticed elements are inscribed with an enduring record of use; deep furrows caused by the circulation of cages, beds, or trolleys, or the more irregular ‘mark-making’ of a newly acquired cast or crutch.

Reflecting the heavy footfall and military origins of the corridor, Jon has used WWII-era boot-polish to create a material akin to super-sized carbon paper. Transferring his medium from one surface to another, it is as if the marks found on these plates have miraculously accumulated to portray a formative moment in Musgrove’s history.

At 00:01 on 5^th Dec 1942, this site became the US 67^th General Hospital, a World War Two evacuation facility, primarily constructed to receive casualties from the anticipated invasion of Europe, now known as D-Day.

It is believed that Lawrence J Wiltgen, Staff Sgt, B Company, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment was the first casualty from enemy fire on D-Day (6th June 1944) to be treated in a hospital in England.

He remained on his aircraft having been hit by flak, arriving at Musgrove at 04:30, prior to the landing of the troops on the beaches of Normandy. Despite having 27 pieces of shrapnel removed, Wiltgen returned to action, being further wounded during the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in January 1945.

Wiltgen’s wartime jump boots provide a literal ‘point of contact’ between him, the hospital, and these globally significant events, the rip in their calf alluding to a significant moment of ‘rupture’ and an enduring legacy.

Jon has used WWII-era boot-polish to create a material akin to super-sized carbon paper, linking subject and object using materials authentic to the time. Whilst polish ordinarily conceals, or repairs the marks and traces of wear, Jon’s transfer drawings seek to reveal and represent Wiltgen’s accumulated archive of experience, the four views, reminiscent of a systematic medical investigation.

In using the boots to tell this one story, Jon seeks, by extension, to represent the experiences of the circa 24,000 personnel who passed through the wartime hospital, each of whom left their mark, as they themselves were marked.