Here's a song I wrote about this kind of thing a few years ago:

In the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night,
propped up on your pillow you wait till it gets light.
And though your body's aching, you know that it's all right,
in the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night.
And over in the distance, in a little pool of light,
there's a nurse, she's busy writing
all that stuff they've got to write.
But you know that if you called her
she'd be right there by your side
and she'd tuck you in and give you stuff to help you feel all right.

And all around me sleeping are a bunch of broken men,
who came here to the Chestnut Ward to get patched up again,
and we've talked all day about our lives
and the choices that we made,
and it's hard to believe we only
met each other yesterday.
In the Chestnut Ward...

Old men who fought, so long ago, against the fall of night,
and one who went to prison, for he wouldn't go to fight.
And one who had a comrade who was killed by Uncle Sam -
and me, I was a baby then, in a shelter, in a pram.
Well, it's something like a prison camp, and something like a jail,
and all of us are frightened, men, though some are tough as nails.
And we all are tired and hopeful - we're tired of all the pain,
and we're waiting till the morning when we hope we'll walk again.
In the Chestnut Ward....

But they're closing down the Chestnut Ward,
that's what the papers say.
And the people who have helped us here
will go their separate ways.
There's a cheaper way to do it, and the Chestnut Ward won't pay
when you're getting back to basics in the modern kind of way.
Well the ones who'd close the Chestnut ward,
I'd cut them back to size.
I'd cut them into pieces, along with all their lies.
And I'd leave them lying broken - and I wouldn't even care.
Still, perhaps they might get mended - if the Chestnut Ward's still there.

In the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night,
propped up on your pillow you wait till it gets light.
And though your body's aching, you know that it's all right,
in the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night.
And over in the distance, in a little pool of light,
there's a nurse, she'd busy writing
all that stuff they've got to write.
But I know that if I called her
she'd be right there by my side
to tuck me in and give me stuff to help me feel all right.
In the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night,
propped up on your pillow you wait till it gets light.
And though your body's aching, you know that it's all right,
in the Chestnut Ward, in the middle of the night.

The Chestnut Ward was in St Margaret's |Hospital, Epping. It was where they did the operations on joints. I was in for a knee operation, after falling downstairs a few months earlier.

They stuck all the men up one end of the ward. Most of us were in for hip replacements.It was an old-fashioned sort of ward with rows of beds along either side. And it was a whole lot better than the more modern wards in Harlow Hospital. And they hadn't modernised the approach to patient care either, thank God.

A lot of the talk was about the war - most of the men were hip replacment patients, a generation ahead of me. One of them had been a conscientious objector, another was still bitter about how a friend of his was shot and killed by a trigger happy American sentry. No antagonism between the old soldier and the conchie.