'They've been a lifeline': How soldiers saved Greater Manchester's hospitals this winter

“I only came in today for a check up, at 9am and I’m still here - it’s 2pm. Well… as long as they sort my problem out I suppose.”

An 79-year-old Joe Illidge, born and bred in Moss Side, sits patiently on a bed inside Salford Royal Hospital.

The emergency department is busy today, according to the nurses pacing the corridors, zipping from one sick person to the next.

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The sight of patients, like Joe, waiting hours to be seen has become somewhat commonplace in recent weeks, as the number of emergency department patients have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in the wake of a pandemic.

But while Joe undergoes the all-too-familiar rigmarole of waiting to be seen, there is an unexpected sight on the wards.

Striding through the fluorescent-lit hallways, groups of men and women in jungle khaki and deep blue - soldiers and sailors pushing patients in wheelchairs, hands full with the freshest brew round.

Amid pleas from an NHS struggling to cope with demand, as the service haemorrhaged staff who fell sick or were forced to isolate during the peak of the Omicron wave, the military was drafted in.

Within 72 hours of getting the call in the fledgling weeks of 2022, more than 130 Army and Royal Navy uniforms had landed in Greater Manchester, filing through 11 of the city’s biggest hospitals, deployed to the busiest of the region’s departments.

Put simply, they 'have been a lifeline’, say the doctors and nurses who found themselves at the epicentre of a staffing crisis, which saw thousands within the NHS workforce grounded at home over Christmas and New Year.

“Initially, I thought it was a bit strange, the armed forces being ‘drafted in’,” Lynn Harrison, Salford Royal Hospital’s Emergency Department unit manager,