No More Ch

Many U.S. soldiers wounded in Africa, some of them already home in U.S. hospitals, could testify last week that U.S. Army medicine has become lightning-fast work.

In World War I, an Army hospital could often be set up in a chateau a few miles behind the lines with some expectation of staying there for months. Open, fluid warfare and the development of air combat have changed all that. A hospital close to the lines must now be mobile or it may be lost. It must be inconspicuous or it may be bombed and strafed.

Care of the African wounded is divided among five echelons, extending from the field back to the U.S. Every combat battalion has at least two medical men who take their equipment—including X-ray machines—up to as close as 400 yards of the fighting. Medical department soldiers assigned to the unit go out in the field, apply emergency first aid, call stretcher bearers. Stretcher bearers tag the wounded, bring them to the unit's field station. There the doctors give necessary quick treatment. Their orders are to stick to their stations. If the line of battle gives, they may be killed or captured like any other soldier.

To these field-aid stations come stretcher bearers to take wounded men back to a collecting station. There further treatment is given, if necessary, before ambulance transportation to the division's clearing station, where wounded are sorted according to the type and severity of their wounds.

The wounded are then moved by ambulance convoys to 1) surgical hospitals, "or those needing operations quickly, 2) evacuation hospitals, for nonsurgical cases and movable surgical cases or 3) convalescent hospitals, for men who will soon be able to return to combat. Men needing longer, more special care are taken still farther away to general hospitals beyond the combat zone.

The last echelon handles selected cases brought all the way home—those requiring long convalescence before they can return to duty. And going home is often better than medicine for those who are able to make the trip.