Book 15.Indb

Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Contents Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1 Chalkboard Training 10 2 Baptism of Fire 29 3 Combat Reality 49 4 The Battalion Aid Station 63 5 Day-to-Day Health 82 6 Company Aid Men 104 Conclusion 119 Select Bibliography 125 Index 133 vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137347695 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Introduction Abstract: The introduction provides a brief overview of the historical development of the United States Medical Department from 1799 to 1939 with attention to World War I personnel shortages and medical evacuation procedures. The introduction defines key words used in the study on World War II first echelon medics including Battalion Aid Station, “medic,” “combat medic,” and “aid man.” Further, it describes the multi-tiered evacuation system used by the infantry in European campaigns of 1944–45. The introduction provides a note on sources, including questionnaires prepared by the author. Shilcutt, Tracy. Infantry Combat Medics in Europe, 1944–45, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. doi: 10.1057/9781137347695. DOI: 10.1057/9781137347695 1 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 2 Infantry Combat Medics in Europe, 1944–45 The action lasted less than 30 minutes, but in the early spring of 1945, an “intense firefight” east of the Rhine River drove the American soldiers to ground. As they scuttled for shelter, the “zing and pop of [the] bullets” attended continuous tree bursts, which rained on F Company of the 309th Infantry. Remarkably, the unit suffered only one casualty, Robert Gregory, who was writhing and in great pain. When medic John Collins reached Gregory, he quickly cut the uniform away exposing the wound. There was no blood, “merely raw flesh” shaped like the sideways bullet that entered near the kidneys. Collins realized the random ricochet would prove fatal, so the medic spoke gently to Gregory, telling him that he would be headed home. Gregory died a short time later and Collins surely grasped more clearly his limitations as a company aid man.1 Just two years after the war’s end, Collin’s division published its official history, but it scarcely portrayed the complexity of the aid man’s job. The spare description analytically depicts a typical combat medic moving under fire to the side of a wounded man, administering morphine, and then calling for a litter squad; the bearers swiftly remove the wounded soldier to a battalion aid station (BAS) where a knowledgeable doctor gives him professional attention.2 A subtle tone of admiration underlies the text, but the clinical account implies that front line medics somehow managed the combat environment in some pre-determined formulaic pattern. The depiction conveys nothing of the appalling wounds, the brutally random nature of war, nor the maddening bedlam swirling around field medics at work. In short, while the narrative acknowledges the combat medic as a vital cog in the war machinery, it conveys no understanding of the front line medical soldier, laboring in a surreally violent world of bewildering complexity. The dual nature of combat exposes war’s striking irony: the charge to close with and destroy the enemy couples with tasks of salvage, that is, the rescue of the wounded infantrymen who might recover and rejoin the fight. During World War II, combat medics adapted in battle, overcoming shortcomings in the Army’s medical system and gross inadequacies in their own training. They initiated critical treatment for the battle wounded, dramatically increasing chances for survival. As these medical soldiers plunged into combat, they at once found their training had scarcely prepared them for an environment marked by unrelenting car- nage as the most consistent truth. In a military structure that demanded conformity, combat medics had to adapt, modify, evade, and disregard DOI: 10.1057/9781137347695 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Introduction 3 standard operating procedures in order to save lives. They dared innova- tively to impose some small order on their chaotic environment. Infantry medics contributed substantially to the combat effort in Europe, and although there remains a fundamental cognizance that medics gave the combat wounded some chance for life, scant understanding exists of the identity of combat medics, the role of their training, cir- cumstances under which they operated, and how these medical soldiers fitted into the fighting units. This study then focuses on infantry combat medics in Europe, opening a dialogue for understanding the function, humanity, and singular accomplishments of the front line medical soldier during World War II. For the purposes of this study, the terms “medic” and “combat medic” refer inclusively to any soldiers who worked out of the first echelon battalion aid stations; this designation consequently applies to Medical Corps (MC) officers, Medical Administrative Corps (MAC) officers, non-commissioned officers, medical and surgical technicians, litter bearers, and company aid men who functioned within the battalion- level medical detachments. The term “aid man,” by contrast, refers exclu- sively to those medical soldiers assigned to rifle or weapons companies; these men, such as Private John Collins, had the daily task of rendering immediate aid to the wounded soldier under fire on the front line. And while the fundamental first aid tasks of front line emergency care did not significantly change from those employed in previous wars, the structure under which World War II medical soldiers operated had revised due to lessons learned from past wars, and by larger cultural influences including the professionalization of and specialized training within the medical community. Overview: historical development of the Medical Department to World War I The United States Congress approved an Army Medical Department in 1799, and then in 1818 authorized the permanent position of Surgeon General. But until the Civil War, American military battlefield medical care depended primarily upon the cooperation of regimental surgeons working within a military system that failed to prioritize a policy for casualty evacuation. The Medical Department’s failure to consolidate casualty treatment and evacuation during conflicts with frontier Indians DOI: 10.1057/9781137347695 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 4 Infantry Combat Medics in Europe, 1944–45 and with Mexico meant that American military medical doctrine was in a sorry state when the Civil War began.3 Both the Union and Confederate Armies suffered from the lack of a coordinated system to care for and evacuate wounded rearward, so during the early battles of the war, wounded might languish on the field for up to a week. Additionally, Sanitary Commission volunteers rather than Medical Department personnel ultimately provided definitive care for the wounded in the hospitals. Perhaps one of the most significant adaptations employed by both Northern and Southern medical practices was the emergence of evacuation systems that utilized ambulance corps modeled after those in the French Army. This substantially reduced the time the wounded lay unattended.4 Following the Civil War the Medical Department largely reduced its numbers as front line military medicine increasingly came under the control of civilian physicians. But, even as United States Army medical doctrine stagnated from 1870 to 1890, scientific discoveries and increased standardization of medical education transformed American medicine and this professionalization had ramifications for military medicine in the last decade of the nineteenth century.5 Military surgeons increasingly accepted tools and techniques standard in the larger world of Western medicine, which allowed for a better understanding of the processes of disease.6 The military mirrored broader cultural trends toward better education for physicians when the Medical Department Army Medical School opened in 1893. Yet, the abysmal performance of the MC during the War with Spain in 1898 resulted in a reorganization of the Medical Department. During the early decades of the twentieth century, Medical Department officers Walter Reed, Leonard Wood, and William Gorgas led the medical world as they made dramatic progress toward controlling tropical diseases.7 When the First World War erupted, American volunteers and medical units numbered among the first to aid in Allied casualty care and evacuation efforts. The Medical Department followed the American Red Cross and sent medical military observers to France as early as 1917. Despite this strong initial showing, the Medical Department suffered perpetually throughout the war with shortages of medical personnel and supplies.8 When the United States declared war, the Medical Department was targeted for reductions. Planners had proposed that the enlisted force of the Medical Department would have a relative strength of 10 percent DOI: 10.1057/9781137347695 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Copyrighted material – 9781137347688 Introduction 5 of the Army, but within only two months, the Tables of Organization reduced the allowance to a 9 percent ratio.9 Because the Medical Department made the needs of the front its priority, the shortage crisis became acute when the United States committed combat troops. Further, a lack of medical replacement soldiers compromised care at every level, when the Army diverted

Load more