Heritage: St Helier Hospital has been at the forefront of healthcare in the borough more than 70 years. James Pepper speaks to a man who was there at the very begiining Almost 71 years ago to the day, this picture of a relaxed, dandy looking man was taken outside the brand new St Helier Hospital.

The hospital was not yet open, but a small team of staff, including the man pictured Alfred Solomon, was preparing the architecturally innovative building for the first patients.

The hospital was a truly modern design by top architects Saxon, Snell & Phillips, which included curved walls rather than corners to make it easier to clean.

Alfred Solomon had been transferred to St Helier from Kingston County Hospital and was earning £108 a year as a junior clerk, but following the outbreak of WWII he was forced to take on extra duties.

Mr Solomon said: "We had to do something called fire watching. Basically we were issued with tin hats, some sand and a shovel, and a stirrup pump while we patrolled the building all night. Incendiary bombs were landing on the hospital every other night so we would run to them with our sand buckets and water pump to try and put them out."

Luckily for Mr Solomon, on the night the hospital's maternity block was bombed by the German army, destroying parts of the hospital before it had even opened, he had booked the night off.

Mr Solomon said: "I don't think I would be here had I have been working that night."

Although it hadn't been officially opened, the hospital still contained around 30 patients, who were being looked after in the isolation ward, and therefore cut off from the rest of the building.

Mr Solomon, now 89, said: "Because all the tunnels under the hospital were connected, they were all destroyed by the explosion of the land mine, but thankfully the one part of the building which didn't have a tunnel connected to it was the isolation ward, for obvious reasons."

All the lifts were blown out, and the hospital was rendered paralysed before its first patient had walked through the doors.

Mr Solomon arrived at work the next morning to find the hospital in ruins. He said: "There was glass all in the road, you couldn't get close to the actual building, it was too dangerous. To see the scale of the damage, it was incredible there were no casualties."

The hospital cost over £1 million to repair but suffered sustained damage throughout the war.

It was a lucky escape for Mr Solomon, and he believes it was Hitler's first attempt to get him.

He said: "The second time he tried, he lay mines just outside Dover harbour while I was a telegraphist aboard Motor Gun Boat 330.

The third time my MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) was sank and the Germans captured me. The fourth time he tried to get me he was very clever - he got the Americans to do it. I was a prisoner of war in the naval barracks in Wilhelmshaven where I was being held for interrogation. The American air force bombed it. I was dug out from the rubble the next day, but I'm still standing."

After spells in various prisoner of war camps, Mr Solomon was kept at Stalag VIIIB, near Breslau where he tried to keep up troops spirits as a violinist in the camp symphony orchestra.

One day, with his friend Jack Clements, he escaped from a working party in Czeckoslovakia and hid in a house in Prague waiting patiently until the German soldiers retreated.

After the war ended, Alfred Solomon returned home and to his job at St Helier Hospital where he studied to become an Associate of Hospital Administrators, which he achieved in 1948 before becoming a fellow of the Institute of Hospital Administrators in 1964.