NO DOUBT many people are aware of the fight to keep open the last military hospital (Haslar, in Hampshire), in order to treat our wounded military forces.

It is essential, to aid recovery, for all military personnel to be surrounded by their own military types, be they doctors, nurses, patients and so on, so they can swap stories.

How sad to think that out of the many dedicated military hospitals there used to be, there is only one left, and this threatened with closure very soon.

It is because of York’s military hospital that I owe my very existence.

The hospital used to be in what is now known as Hospital Fields, Fulford.

In 1920, or thereabouts, my father had been wounded fighting in Mesopotamia.

Convalescing in York Military Hospital, he was allowed to go out and about in York, but dressed in his “hospital blues”.

He was sitting in Rowntree Park feeling quite low as, being a Londoner, he received no visitors. My grandparents were walking through the park and got into conversation with him.

Feeling sorry for his being so far from home, and not getting visitors, they asked if he would like to go home with them for tea.

The rest, as the saying has it, is history.

Because of his injuries my dad was invalided out of the Army and mum and he were married. They went to live in London, but mum got homesick so they moved back to York, eventually finishing-up in Cherry Tree Avenue, New Earswick.

My dad got a job with Whitby Oliver where he worked, initially as a driver but finishing-up as transport manger, until his death in 1956. Where is Whitby Oliver based now? Hospital Fields, Fulford.

There is an online petition to keep Haslar open, on the Downing Street website, the address being petitions.pm.gov.uk Philip Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge, York.