Private Bert Stanley Johnson (1919-1940)

Service Number 7618944 Royal Army Ordnance Corps

 

Bert Stanley Johnson was born on 10th January 1919 in Bordesley Green. He was the youngest child of Edward James Johnson and his wife Ann Sarah née Grimmett.

At the outbreak of war Bert is working as a Motor Mechanic and living at the family home with his widowed mother and brother Albert. He joined the Royal Ordnance Corps where in mid September he fell from a motor cycle sustaining substantial injuries. He was admitted to the Whitchurch Military Hospital where he died on 5th September 1940. He is buried in Yardley Cemetery.

Whitchurch Military Hospital started life as the Cardiff City Mental Asylum. It had served as a military hospital during WW1.

During World War Two part of the hospital was again in use by the military. Eight hundred beds were handed over to the military, making Whitchurch the largest emergency services hospital in Wales.

200 beds were retained for civilian mental health patients. British, American and occasionally even German soldiers were treated there for wounds and for the psychological trauma of modern warfare.