Apparently, they were still used up until 1963 (from memory), but I got the impression that during WW1 they were only used in the UK.
There's another thread about 'hospital blues' at https://genealogy-specialists.com/threads/uniform-id-anyone.9743/#post-146546 I knew I'd seen the term somewhere before ...
Here is a close-up of hospital blues on this thread (album) of mine. https://genealogy-specialists.com/media/cousins-john-jack-and-richard-dick-evans.1375/
I've contacted the College of Arms website, with regard to this query, so we'll have to see if they can help. People on a Buxton Facebook page think it might have been on a building in the Hardwick Mount area, which has since been demolished. There were quite a few Auxiliary Military Hospitals in and around Buxton, where my grandmother grew up.
Had a very helpful reply from the College of Arms to say that some (or perhaps all) of the shields don't represent officially recognised English heraldry, and they could be simply decorative. However... shield C resembles the Arms of the Vernon family of Haddon Hall (Argent a Fret Sable). As to demolished buildings, which could have been used as Auxiliary Military Hospitals, ignoring the 'porch', Haddon Hall Hydro was suggested, which would tie in. Here is a postcard photo I have of same, probably post 1911, as the manageress prior to that was Mrs. Little, and her name has been overwritten. The other possibility raised was the Buxton Hydropathic Hotel, which served as the Granville Military Hospital during the First World War with other hotels acting as annexes. The following link has more information : https://www.wondersofthepeak.org.uk/facts/buxton-hydro-hotel/
I'm glad you're making progress, and the idea of a hotel in Buxton seems a good one. The Haddon Hall connection seems a good clue - perhaps the arms were 'borrowed' when they picked that as the name for the hydro. However, I don't think your photo is of the same bit of it as the main entrance on the postcard. Yours has just the porch between the bay windows (and I've just noticed that it's off centre), but the postcard one has an extra window that we can see, and possibly one the other side as well. The porch might fit better on the further part of the building, with the lower roof - but on the other hand the windows there might be taller than the ones in your photo. Or perhaps, especially with the porch being off centre, it was somewhere down the side or round the back. Meanwhile, a couple of links/photos: Code: https://www.andrewsgen.com/photo/derbyshire/buxton_haddonhallhydro.htm https://picturethepast.org.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/dchq001684/posterid/dchq001684.html
Code: https://picturethepast.org.uk/image-licensing/poster/dcbm100001/posterid/dcbm100001.html It looks as though we have found the building with the 4 shields, long since demolished. If you look at the building on the left of the picture in the link, which is in Hardwick Square, as was, you can see what look like the shields over the door. The building was replaced by a block of flats.
