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The Function of a Field Hospital in
the Chain of Evacuation During WWII
Recently I received the following email from James K. Sunshine (One time T/3,
3rd Platoon, 42nd
Field Hospital)
I found your interesting site and read several pieces.
One of them was by a Keith Winston who described in a v-mail the
evacuation of casualties
in France. He omitted the place of the field hospital in the chain of
evacuation. I was
with the 42nd FH (3rd platoon) from Utah Beach on D-4 to the end of the
war.
A field hospital platoon
supported an infantry division and was usually located at the level of
the clearing
station. Its function was to operate solely on casulties hit in the
chest, abdomen, or
large bone of the leg. Of course, other wounds were fixed at the same
time, but the idea
was to bring major surgery as close to the line as possible. All other
casualties followed
the route described by Winston, back to the evac hospitals. Each of the
field hospital's
three platoons consisted of about 60 enlisted men, six nurses, and
about a half dozen
surgeons.In the Korean Conflict field hospitals became MASH units. It
would be good to
have the work of the field hospitals accurately recalled on your site.
Regards,
James
K.
Sunshine (One
time T/3 3rd Platoon, 42nd Field
Hospital)
So I ask Mr. Sunshine if he
would kindly contribute some information about his experiences in a
Field Hospital during
WWII to the web site. He graciously reply with the following personal
account. I thank him
for his contribution.
Below is an excerpt from
an
article Mr. Sunshine wrote for the Providence (RI) Sunday Journal
in 1994 for the
50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. It tells you
something of the typical
field hospital operation.
Beachhead Hospital, June 8-17: We disembark on June 8,
climbing down the nets to a landing craft. I worry about falling into
the sea, but I
don't. We are put ashore without getting our feet wet. The beach is now
more or less
secure, and we march inland past fields marked with signs in German
warning of mines and
littered with crashed gliders. Our major, a self-important surgeon who
imagines he is a
paratrooper ignores his overlay and leads us inland until suddenly we
are surrounded by
mortar bursts. Diving headlong into the ditches, we become aware of
infantry in foxholes
shouting at us to get down and questioning our sanity. We
retreat, cursing, in
haste and embarrassment, wishing that the major actually was a
paratrooper and somewhere
else.
Two
platoons of the hospital are already ashore.
Together with a platoon of another field hospital they have set up near
Montebourg, a mile
or two in from the beachhead. With our arrival we have the makings of
four complete tent
hospitals in one big field.
Wounded men, tagged for identification, are
lying on litters in
rows all over the field. Walking wounded stand around waiting to be
helped. Ambulances
arrive with fresh loads. Most are American paratroopers of the
82nd and 101st
Divisions, but some are Germans, and others simply unidentifiable
foreigners pressed into
service by the Germans. The enemy soldiers have been at war a long
time, and they stink of
dirt and sweat and blood. They are given the same treatment as Allied
casualties.
I
dig my hole beside a hedgerow and report to a tent
surgery. I am a surgical technician, fifth grade, (a corporal) who
works in a surgery and
assists surgeons. A surgeon, a major, notices me standing uncertainly
and says,
"Let's go, corporal, get some blood on your hands." Not really funny,
perhaps,
but then we are all drunk with excitement and determined to do
well.
I follow him through the blackout curtain into
the surgery where
three surgical teams are at work. Generators outside the tent
provid power for
lights. I am told to hold a leg while a surgeon saws it off. I wonder
why I don't throw up
Isolation Tent, June 10: The
German is dying, but it is taking a long time.
I have been sent to a tent at the end of the
field, next to a
hedgerow, and as far from the hospital tents as possible. The reason is
gas, gas gangrene.
I am supposed to stay with the German until he
dies. There
is nothing I can do to help him except to give him water. I cannot
speak his language
beyond the simple words of yes and no and does it hurt. And he cannot
speak mine, except
to moan and say ``Ja.'' He is blond and young and filthy
dirty. His wounds
exude the odor of gangrene. He does not seem to be a monster.
Gas gangrene is our terror. It is a foul
infection that
flourishes in damaged flesh in the absence of oxygen. Death is
virtually certain.
Usually you don't know it is there until you open up a wound.
Then it smells to
high heaven, someone shouts ``Gas'', and everything in the
surgery stops. The man is
hurriedly finished and moved away as far as possible from other wounded
lest he infect
them. The tent then has to be scrubbed down with disinfectant, and all
instrument packs
re-sterilized.
The night sky is lit by flashes of artillery
fire. A lone German
plane buzzes overhead, drawing a few bursts of anti-aircraft fire,
which falls back on us
in the form of shrapnel. A few yards away, the steadily growing
hospital dump smells of
burning bloody bandages and discarded flesh and limbs. I stare at
the German boy,
not knowing what to do. Finally, toward morning, he dies.
Battlefield Surgery: The 42nd is a field
hospital, each of its
three platoons small enough to pack into six trucks or so that keep up
with the advancing
battle line, one platoon to a division. Each platoon has 60 men, a half
dozen officers,
and six nurses who have been brought from England now that the
beachhead is secured. Many
of the enlisted men are non-commissioned technicians of one sort or
another trained back
in the states in army schools and hospitals to be surgical, x-ray,
laboratory and medical
technicians. With the exception of an occasionl undertaker's assistant,
none of the
technicians has had previous medical experience.
Building on the experiences of World War I,
the army has decided
to move major surgery as close as possible to the most seriously
wounded, operating on
them immediately, while less seriously wounded are moved
back to evacuation
hospitals in the rear.
Most seriously wounded means men shot through
the head, lungs,
bowels, or large bone of the legs, wounds that in World War I were
usually fatal.
Our basic technique is to open up a man's
abdomen with an 8-inch
incision, go through his intestines and other organs carefully looking
for holes made by
bullets or shell fragments. Damaged organs and bowel are removed, the
holes sewed shut and
the incision closed except for a loop of bowel that serves as a
temporary outlet. Minor
wounds are cleaned of damaged flesh and packed with vaseline gauze. We
do chests as well
as bellies, sometimes on the same man. We use great quantities of whole
blood. We
have sulfa, which we smear liberally everywhere we can, and everybody
who lives gets the
new drug penicillin every four hours.
The surgery tent is large enough for two
operations at once. The
patients' litters on sawhorses form the operating tables. Outside
generators power lights
and other equipment. There are two surgeons, an anaesthetist, and a
surgical scrub
technician to each patient. Another technician stands by to replenish
instruments and
supplies and carry out non-sterile tasks. Each operation takes one or
two hours
We move as the
line moves. The patients stay where they are for 10 days
by army regulation, but we move the hospital every two or three days,
leaving the operated
patients in tents to be cared for by holding companies who move up and
give us new tents.
Unload, set up, operate, tear down, load, move, and set up
again.
The Ward Tent: A quiet night. Sixty men fresh
out of surgery are
sleeping on canvas army cots. I have drawn ward duty, and dutifully go
from cot to cot
with a syringe loaded with penicillin, thrusting it quickly into each
man's buttock. It's
a real wakeup call, but most of them are too sick to care. I check IV
fluids and suction,
give water, take temperatures, and try to ignore the subdued moans of
pain that has become
a steady background sound. Men who have lost arms and legs are
the worst. Some of
them, I think, simply talk themselves to death. On most nights, two or
three men in each
tent die, and their bodies are placed in a truck that waits outside.
Each morning it makes
the trip to Graves Registration where digging crews bury them in
temporary cemeteries.
Once, we place a French woman in the truck thinking she is dead. She
wakes up and there is
hell to pay. The Third Platoon has four tents like this. Each is
60 feet long, is
supported by 4 poles, and weighs 350 pounds rolled up. Putting it up is
an hour's work for
four men.
To Paris, August 4: Breaking out of the
beachead, the army grinds
on, gathering speed with experience. We become expert at our medical
jobs and efficient at
setting up the hospital in a two hours and taking it down a few
days or a week
later. The landscape around us is littered with half-destroyed tanks
and trucks, blasted
houses, dead cows, and in the hedgerows and woods, German and American
bodies turning
black and bloating in the summer sun.
We keep moving. Pont L'Abbe on June 17, St.
Sauver on June 22,
St. Mere Eglise on July 6, Carentan on July 10. Without knowing
why, we are told to
change shoulder patches from the First Army to the Third Army and are
given over to the
newly arrived General George S. Patton whose idea of war consists of
speed, violence and
always wear your helmet, soldier. Our trucks roll through the
devastated rubble of
St. Lo, through villages whose streets are lined with cheering crowds
who push bottles of
Calvados and fresh vegetables into our hands, welcome after a diet of
K-rations. Villedieu
on August 6, Senoches on August 25, and finally Paris on August
28, where we set up
in the outskirts on the Orleans road and watch the Maquis race by in
trucks, firing wildly
in the air just to celebrate Liberation
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