Nurse Artist

A remarkable piece of wartime history has been unearthed which sheds more light on the world-famous Guinea Pig Club of Sussex.

The 649 men were patients operated on by pioneering surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead during World War Two. Many were RAF pilots and air crew who received horrific burns in crashes or after being shot down.

For decades the club has kept a set of medical drawings of many of the men but did not realise the story behind them. They were drawn by a young volunteer nurse called Mollie Lentaigne who was asked personally by McIndoe to record his operations on paper for use in medical lectures.

Recently the club discovered via a social media search that Mollie was alive and well and living in Zimbabwe. She returned to East Grinstead to be re-united with the drawings for the first time in more than Seventy years.

The drawings, numbering more than a hundred, are in the archives of East Grinstead Museum, which keeps memorabilia and artefacts associated with the club. There are about 60 surviving Guinea Pigs living all over the world.