Battlefield Medics: Saving Lives Under Fire

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At the regimental aid post, the first priority was to keep a wounded soldier warm and to prevent shock. His wounds were cleaned and bandages applied. Broken limbs were splinted. The patient might also be given a tetanus shot, as there was always the risk of infection. Dead tissue was cut away when the wound was cleaned, and the MO had to be extremely careful to remove any bits of clothing or other foreign matter that could turn a wound septic. Then the soldier would be made as comfortable as possible until a field ambulance could transfer him to a dressing station. Private Willcox was one of the walking wounded, a soldier who could get to the dressing station under his own steam. He might as well have found himself in a different universe: ‘In the early hours of the morning I tumbled into an electrically lighted dug-out dressing station two miles from the front line where there were clean bandages and steaming tea. I fell at full length, motionless. Someone pressed drink to my lips.’

Triage was carried out at the dressing station, and the wounded were separated into three categories: those with less serious wounds that could be dressed and then sent on to the field hospital for further treatment; those requiring immediate emergency treatment; and the ‘hopeless cases’ who were given palliative care, often in the form of morphine or chloroform.

The field hospitals — or casualty clearing stations in the RAMC — were, in the words of a 1917 British Medical Association manual, ‘real hospitals, despite the fact that some are only about six miles from the fighting line….The patients are nursed by trained women nurses; ordinary hospital beds are provided for the most severe cases; the operating theatres have usually four operating tables…electric light…and some have X-ray annexes of their own….[C]linical laboratory work is done for them by the mobile laboratories….’

Casualty clearing stations (CCS) had the amenities of civilian hospitals, but the comparison ended there. Dr. John Hayward had 20 years’ experience as a general practitioner and served a brief stint at a Red Cross hospital in England when he volunteered to go to France in 1918. Assigned as a surgeon to the CCS at Amiens, he was overwhelmed at first by the volume and the difficulty of the work:

They come in such numbers that the tent is soon filled. Many are white and cold, and lie still and make no response, and those who do are laconic….I have had no instructions how to dispose of such numbers, or the method of procedure, but realize that they must be examined briefly and sorted, and sent to one or other of our hospital tents….

It was 7 a.m. before I had cleared the tent…but at 10 a.m. I should have to begin to operate for another twelve hours and on cases like these!

It was extraordinary that in this charnel tent of pain and misery there was silence, and no outward expression of moans or groans or complaints. The badly shocked had passed beyond it; others appeared numbed, or too tired to complain, or so exhausted that they slept as they stood….

`Resuss’ [resuscitation tent] was a dreadful place. Here were sent the shocked and collapsed and dying cases, not able to stand as yet an operation, but which might be possible after the warming-up under cradles in heated beds or transfusion of blood. The effect of transfusion was in some cases miraculous. I have seen men already like corpses, blanched and collapsed, pulseless and with just perceptible breathing, within two hours of transfusion sitting up in bed smoking, and exchanging jokes before they went to the operating table….

That dreadful day of my first experience of a C.C.S. rush ended…after thirty-six hours of continuous work, and somehow I had got through. I was completely exhausted with anxiety and fatigue, and felt I could never go on with it, and was not up to the task: but to give in was even more terrible.

That dreadful day of my first experience of a C.C.S. rush ended…after thirty-six hours of continuous work, and somehow I had got through. I was completely exhausted with anxiety and fatigue, and felt I could never go on with it, and was not up to the task: but to give in was even more terrible.

The ambulance drivers who transported the wounded in a steady flow from the aid post to the dressing station to the field hospital had their share of harrowing experiences. Speed was essential, but so was remembering that severely wounded men could not stand to be bounced around over roads pitted by countless bombardments. There were other hazards, too, as Leslie Buswell, an American volunteer, recalled in American Ambulance Field Service in France:

About ten o’clock I had a call to go to Auberge St. Pierre for two seriously wounded, and when I arrived there, the mdecin chef told me that if I got them to the hospital quickly, they would have a chance of living. So ‘No. 10′ tooted off down the hill — at what the plain warrior would term — ‘a hell of a pace….’

[O]n turning to go to Dieulouard where we take the wounded I saw a huge shell explode two hundred metres down the road I was to drive along. Had the ambulance been empty, or with only slightly wounded, I should have waited, of course, but under the circumstances my duty was to go on as fast as I could. I noticed ahead of me three large motor-trucks and the thought struck me: ‘What if those are hit and contain ammunition.’ I was ten yards away when — bang! — I was half blown out of my seat — a shell had landed on the motor-truck. Hardly believing I was not hit, I increased my pace and emerged from the smoke and blackness, going at a good clip, safe and sound, but shaken….[W]hen I arrived at Dieulouard, I noticed that everybody was pointing at my car. I supposed it was because we looked so smoke-grimed….I then got down to discover what was troubling them. One of the poor fellows had thrown himself off the stretcher and all of his bandages had slipped and a trail of red was flowing from the car and leaving a pool on the ground.

Medical personnel also had to contend with more efficient — and therefore more deadly — weapons. Flamethrowers were introduced by the Germans and quickly adopted by the Allied forces. One automatic machine gun was reckoned to have the same firepower as 80 rifles. But perhaps nothing was as devastating as chemical warfare. The French first used tear gas in battle in 1914, but the Germans were the first to use a lethal agent when they launched an attack with chlorine gas in April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres. Harder to detect and potentially more dangerous than chlorine was mustard gas. Practically odorless, it had no immediate effects, but within hours of exposure, the gas caused severe internal and external blisters. It also contaminated the soil for weeks after its release. Steps were quickly taken to protect soldiers from gas attacks, and by the war’s end, both sides employed highly effective respirators with charcoal filters — a definite step forward from holding cotton pads dipped in a solution of bicarbonate of soda or urine-soaked cloths over the face. It was just another chapter in constantly evolving warfare.

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Tags: Historical Conflicts