#army doctors

Content Note: images of wounded and dead soldiers (not graphic).

I don't think I can describe to you, just how much I loved reading this for the first time in 2023. I keep using this book for some light reading.

So I’m in this clinic, waiting to get my blood drawn, and I look at the doctor and immediately realise that he was in the army!

…Because of the tan. The conversation he made! It was hilarious. He had a tan, but none above his wrists (like John). And then he mentioned that his wife thought he was lucky to go to Europe. He was a doctor, but he said he’d only been here recently. So he must be recently back from military service. So I asked if he was active in Italy. He looked…surprised, my mother looked horrified, and he then laughed and asked if I was from a military family, to which I replied yes. He was very entertained by the whole ordeal.

It was disappointing because he was obviously recently married. He kept twisting his ring around like he wasn’t used to it.

Anyway, that was my brush with deductions!

"THE WONDERFUL ORGANISATION OF THE RAMC"

[WWI FILM—1916-05-15]

The RAMC system for dealing with casualties, France, April 1916. The casualties occur in a forward trench in 51st (Highland) Division sector between Roclincourt and Neuville Saint Vaast. An RAMC captain bandages the head of one man, who with other walking wounded and two stretcher cases is taken to the Regimental Aid Post. From this, coming out of the trench system, the wounded are placed on a 60cm railway trolley and pushed to the Advanced Dressing Station. Here they pass through the Patients' Entrance, and after preliminary treatment are loaded onto an ambulance. This takes them to 18th Casualty Clearing Station on the outskirts of Arras (belonging to 18th Division, recently relieved by the Highland Division). The ambulances are from 8th Motor Ambulance Convoy, attached to the Highland Division. RAMC men unload the stretchers, "each man's equipment is labelled and carefully kept". Four doctors and a nurse conduct an operation in the tented operating theatre. After preliminary treatment the wounded, including the stretcher cases, are when sufficiently recovered taken to board a train at Arras which takes them to Dieppe station (the film starts to break up here). More severe cases are taken by Red Cross* barges down the canals. At Dieppe the men are loaded onto a hospital ship which steams out of harbour "off to England".

source: Imperial War Museum