Stramongate Auxiliary Hospital opened in Kendal on March 11, 2015, and treated more than 2,000 casualties during World War One.

Its medical staff were initially all provided by the West Lancs Casualty Clearing Hospital, which recruited in Westmorland and later served in France.

In mid-March 1915 they were joined by a new recruit - Dr Howard Somervell, who was born in Kendal and descended from the family that established the shoe making company that became K Shoes.

Educated at Rugby he knew at an early age that he wanted to become a surgeon. As a teenager he also developed a love of climbing whilst exploring the Lake district. He started medical school in Cambridge and at the start of WW1 he had just begun his final year of clinical studies in UCH, London. He tried sign up at the War office in 1914 but was advised to finish his studies.

As soon as he had qualified in 1915 he joined the RAMC and was posted to the West Lancs CCH in Kendal just as the Stramongate hospital opened. On its transfer to France the West Lancs CCH was renamed as the 34th Casualty Clearing station (CCS).

After a few months at a depot in Boulogne, the 34th CCS established its new mobile hospital at Vecquemont, near the Somme Front. On the eve of the battle in late June 1916, Somervell’s unit was told to expect up to 1,000 casualties. The reality was much worse.

The 34th CCS. was one of just 14 CCS units serving the Somme battlefields.

An account of the battle reads: “ The first 48 hours of work after July 1 brought us nearly ten thousand wounded. Never in the whole war did we see such a terrible sight. Streams of motor-ambulances a mile long waited to be unloaded.

"The wounded had to lie not merely in our tents and shelters and in the adjacent farm buildings but also in the whole area of the camp , a field of 5 or 6 acres, completely covered in stretchers placed side to side.

"We surgeons were hard at it in the operating theatre, a good hut holding four tables. Occasionally we made a brief look round to select from the thousands of patients those few fortunate ones whose life or limbs we had time to save.

"It was a terrible business… Abdominal cases and others requiring long operations simply had to be left to die. Saving of life by amputation or saving of limbs by the wide opening of wounds had to thought of first. There all around us lying maimed and battered and dying was the flower of Britain’s youth – a terrible sight if ever there was one, yet full of courage and unselfishness and beauty”.