I READ Ann Littles' letter regarding Nieuport (not Newport) House in Almeley and wanted to write to say that the time I spent there, also in the 1940s, was sheer hell.

I had contracted miliary TB and was sent to Nieuport House at six years old, presumably to die. My parents didn't know that I had been moved there from the County Hospital.

The horror of the open-air ward, with no glass in the windows, tree branches poking in, the extreme cold, lying on a horsehair mattress with the little white potty under the bed haunts me still.

Fortunately, during my time the American government under the lease-lend scheme gave six beds for treatment of the new wonder drug streptomycin at the Bristol Children's Hospital and I was offered a bed.

My parents readily gave their consent as they knew that without the drug I had no chance of survival anyway. The cost of each treatment would have been £2,000.

I went to Bristol in October 1947 and was discharged in June 1949 completely cured.

So I now say "thanks, Yanks" for releasing me from the horror of Nieuport House and those truly unhappy days!

ROSEMARY BROWN

Fownhope