ww1 hospitals on the western front

A great yellow, greenish-yellow, cloud. For more on this counting method see Whalen, Robert Weldon: Bitter Wounds. Military surgeons and officials viewed hospitals as ideal training spaces for invalids to successfully prepare for their re-entry into the job market. The last 70 years have seen further developments that have improved casualty survival rates in times of conflict. And as mentioned before, the improvements in preventative medical care cannot be overstated. Alina Enzensberger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen. Berlin-based surgeon Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859-1922) wrote in a 1916 newspaper article that critics should simply take a walk through one of our military hospitals in order to see that the German nation stands at the forefront of all civilized nations. From the very first weeks of combat onwards, the First World War unleashed a formerly unknown dimension of mass killing and produced unprecedented forms of physical injuries, illnesses and nervous disorders in all belligerent armies. 63-64. It was also evoked by John Singer Sargent's very famous painting Gassed, in which you see the row of blinded soldiers grasping onto each other. Enzensberger, Alina: Hospitals , in: 1914-1918-online. If a soldiers healing process took a disproportionately long time, he was meant to be discharged. However, at the same time, this implied that the military depended heavily on civilians on their money, personnel, time capacities and resources while the Red Cross and other civilian actors in turn were subjected to the military giving its consent for them to be able to carry out their relief activities. The RAMCs job was both to maintain the health and fighting strength of the forces in the field and ensure that in the event of sickness or wounding they were treated and evacuated as quickly as possible. Hospitals were commanded and supervised by a complex network of military institutions. For more on the structure of the German army medical service see Enzensberger, bergangsrume 2021, pp. Only after a month-long restructuring phase were military authorities and civilian organisations such as the Red Cross able to enlarge the hospital system. Preventing infection taking hold in wounds was another huge concern. In Britain, an increased demand for beds meant that civilian hospitals were repurposed for military needs. Secondly, hospitals were supposed to disconfirm allegations against Germany that it was a barbaric country, having committed war atrocities in France and Belgium. Pre-war planning in all countries had completely underestimated the immense numbers of soldiers in need of medical care. I've gathered photographs of the Great War from dozens of collections, some. During trench warfare, they became more stable and their medical infrastructures began to develop and improve. (1) Slang term for . Some men could be patched up and sent back into battle, and for emergency life and death cases, primitive surgery was possible at aid posts. [5] The latter was commanded by the four medical bureaus of the Prussian, Bavarian, Saxonian and Wurttemberg war ministries as well as regional medical offices. ): Race, Empire and First World War Writing, New York 2011, pp. 78-107; for the German case see Enzensberger, bergangsrume 2021, pp. [51] Hospitalized soldiers also came into more regular contact with women. The French held about 360 miles of . And yet, it was not disease or illness that accounted for the huge death toll of WWI. Alamy. SBA Hanks was on board HMS Carnarvon during the Battle of the Falklands in . These ranged from the use of penicillin to the widespread availability of blood transfusions and the first use of aircraft for evacuation. The American Red Cross and a Nations Humanitarian Awakening, New York 2013; Eckart, Wolfgang / Osten, Philipp (eds. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. On the basis of personal accounts from German soldiers see Enzensberger, bergangsrume 2021, pp. In many cases, these were not friendships in a civilian sense, but rather resembled the comradeship of being in the trenches and the idea of fellow suffering. ): Battles, battlefields and campaigns, Western Front, World War, 1914-1918 ; Military hospitals, Guerre mondiale (1914-1918) ; Hpitaux militaires. However for the more long-term wounded their journey continued. However, it was an entirely different ball game on other global fronts where the chain of medical treatment was not nearly as well organised. Medical care throughout the First World War was largely the responsibility of the Royal Army Medical Corps ( RAMC ). This was for example the case for the Vienna schools for the war disabled, connected to military hospital No. Patients were often suspected of either malingering or of aggravating existing symptoms so as to delay having to return to service, particularly if a patients clinical presentation was unclear in some way. The Representation of Colonial Troops in French and British First World War Nursing Memoirs, in: Das, Santanu (ed. It used a special system called 'triage' where sick soldiers were put into one of three possible groups: 1. Invisible mustard gas caused terror amongst soldiers. Patients diaries and letters reveal how many different activities were organised by hospital personnel or initiated by soldiers themselves in order to counter boredom and melancholy. The Western Front spawned ailments like trench foot, a painful condition brought on by damp feet, and trench fever, with symptoms similar to flu. For discussions of this issue in Britain see Harrison, The Medical War 2010, p. 61. WW1. ): Kriegssanittsbericht ber die Deutsche Marine 1914-1918, 3 volumes, Berlin 1934. 227-251. For more on the concept of rehabilitation see Perry, Recycling the Disabled 2014; Anderson, Julie / Perry, Heather R.: Rehabilitation and Restoration. One soldier is lying on a wicker chair / bed under a blanket, looking towards the camera. The Failing French Public Health, 1914-1918, in: Eckart / Gradmann (eds. Every battalion had a medical officer, assisted by at least 16 stretcher-bearers. First World War Perspectives on Temporality, London et al. These facilities did not operate independently. Hear about the range of weapons used and the wide variety of ways that men were wounded. Common occupations were gardening, basket-weaving, knotting and carving. Above all, military authorities very much approved of the mobilising and integrating effect which hospitals evidently had on the civilian population. German medical statistics did not count individual patients but only cases. Harrison, Mark: The Medical War. The name refers to the western side of territory under the control of Germany, which was also fighting on its eastern flank for most of the conflict. On November 11, 1918, all fighting ceased on the Western Front, after four years, and some eight million casualties. Sinking down knee deep was quite mild at times. Countries like Germany or the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not afford to pay for thousands of unemployed invalids, particularly as they did not have many alternatives when it came to replacing manpower in the army and industry. [6] Five types of military hospitals existed during the war: firstly, field hospitals (or Casualty Clearing Stations (CCSs) in the British army) close to the front lines, secondly, base hospitals in the rear, thirdly, home front hospitals, fourthly, hospitals in means of transportation (hospital trains and hospital ships) and finally, fifthly, prisoner-of-war hospitals. British hospitals, on the other hand, have featured much more broadly in academic works, especially in Carden-Coyne, Ana: The Politics of Wounds. Of the nine million cases[38] treated in hospitals in Germany, 114,489 patients died, that is, 1.3 percent. Soldiers who did not need much care. Gillies had witnessed first hand the devastating effects of modern weaponry. In personal accounts such as letters, diaries and memories, many soldiers described field and base hospitals rather negatively. When the surgeon Harold Gillies returned to England from France, he went about establishing a facial injury ward in Cambridge Army Hospital. World War One: The many battles faced by WW1's nurses. It was made of a combination of flannel and flannelette, issued by the government and often fit poorly, as only a handful of standardized sizes existed. Hospitals especially those at home provided the sick and wounded with a respite from the life-endangering situations so prevalent in the trenches and provided them with weeks or months of rest in a safe and dry place. Studies have shown that hospitals were a place not only of military discipline, but also of intimacy and even sexuality between patients, nurses, and other female staff and visitors.[52]. Dr. Karl Frickhinger, a councillor and medical officer in the city of Wrzburg, urgently warned against extended hospitalisation, from a psychological point of view: Statements like this one reveal that German medical officers did not only view quick discharges of patients as an abstract economic necessity. These documents give the location of Hospitals and Casualty Clearing Stations on the Western Front, classified according to location and dates. In Germany, for example, the hospital system operated in a rather chaotic fashion during the first months of the war. This finally allowed them to provide proper medical assistance to the high numbers of wounded and sick soldiers returning home from the war fronts. For todays historians, they are a fascinating source for analysing the dominant forms of humour used, popular topics of discussion, and the character of military hospitals during the Great War. Frickhinger, Karl: Lazarettunterricht, in: Mnchener Medizinische Wochenschrift 62 (1915), p. 967. http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/1745. They became liminal spaces and functioned as multifaceted contact zones between the civilian and military spheres. The RAMC, for example, was composed of doctors from Britain and its dominions. Learn more about how medical services responded to the horrors of the First World War in the trenches on the Western Front and beyond. p. 22. This procedure further manifested their transition from soldier to patient. As well as battle injuries inflicted by shells and bullets, the First World War saw the first use of poison gas. This was meant to prevent even the slightest possibility of them being confused with German soldiers and mingling with them too much.[56]. African priest at Western Front during First World War.jpg 1,000 1,322; 159 KB British Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 Q1765.jpg 800 585; 61 KB At all times all men including stretch-bearers were under fire. . They did so by opening additional military hospitals, thus doubling the number of available beds. 2020, pp. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universitt Berlin, Berlin 2021-05-19. (For more on this topic, watch our video on the role of women in the First World War.). A network of ambulance trains and hospital barges provided transport between these facilities, while hospital ships carried casualties evacuated back home to Blighty. 223-225; 237; for the British case see Reznick, Healing the Nation 2004, pp. This silence surrounding suffering was an effect of the masculine culture of military hospitals, one which qualified utterings of pain as effeminate and childlike. From a military perspective, the hospital was supposed to strengthen morale and combat-readiness amongst patients. See also Kienitz, Sabine: Beschdigte Helden. Despite great progress in medicine since the Crimean War and the Boer War, the casualties of the First World War dwarfed that of previous conflicts, with nearly 10 million armed forces left dead. Self-inflicted Wounds as a Means to Cope with the Hardships of the First World War?, in: Bergen, Leo van / Vermetten, Eric (eds. [25], However, hospital systems did not function smoothly from the beginning of the war onwards. Of all of these cases, about one third were treated in hospitals at home, while the rest remained in hospitals closer to the front. They were quickly given treatment . "No one will ever realise the effort it meant to get these men over this terrible marshy muddy ground. See Geddes, Jennian F.: Deeds and Words in the Suffrage Military Hospital in Endell Street, in: Medical History 51 (2007), pp. World War One was the first conflict where the number of deaths from wounds outstripped those from disease. I was in hospital six weeks in France & having been marked unfit for further service was evacuated to England where I arrived on the 1st of August. This article will provide a transnational overview of the different types of hospitals that existed during the First World War. 312-332. [43] Hospitals at home, on the other hand, were often conceived as counterplaces to the life-threatening situations occurring in the trenches. It was acknowledged but there was a lot more work to be done. Paris, London, Berlin, 1914-1919, volume 2, Cambridge et al. German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939, Ithaca et al. Bullets were also a particular danger; machine gun bullets especially entered the body of very very high velocity and caused catastrophic wounds to flesh. It was a widely acknowledged reality that many men were still sexually active at this time either when they were back home or even behind the lines and there were brothels for example and this led to a rise in things like syphilis and gonorrhoea. pp. The Queen's Hospital in Sidcup opened in June 1917, the first hospital devoted to facial injuries. Hence, they were equivalent to field hospitals. Pawlowsky, Verena / Wendelin, Harald: Die Wunden des Staates. The Western Front. 131-132; 151-152. ): Capital Cities at War. No 14 Australian General Hospital served in the Middle East. [2] At the same time, hospitals highlighted other aspects of the Great War as well, as they were also places in which propaganda could (be) spread, intimacy and comradeship could blossom and flourish, conflicts between military and civilian actors could be carried out and family reunions took place. How patients personally experienced their hospital stay depended on several factors: among others, on the type and severity of their injury or illness, on the facility they were brought to, and on the doctors, nurses and other hospital staff. How patients perceived hospitalization varied from individual to individual, depending heavily on external circumstances (such as whether the hospital was located close to, or far away from, the front) and was rather ambivalent for most servicemen. [29] This resulted in increasingly overcrowded hospitals. This slick system of casualty dispersal on the Western Front saved many many lives, and the evolution of this system can still be seen today in A&E rooms and the use of ambulances things that today seems so fundamental. In Germany, disabled soldiers were even encouraged to work in factories during the daytime in order to reintegrate them smoothly into the job market. To this end, many clinics provided curative workshops, career counselling, re-education classes and other measures. For some of the wounded patients, surgeries, too, were recurring events, albeit rather fear-evoking ones. In 1914, many hospitals close to the front and at home were overwhelmed by the large number of wounded and sick in need of help from the very first months of combat. Hospitals should be, on the contrary, places to re-discipline soldiers. Most military hospitals were lively spaces in which numerous social encounters took place. Because of the growing distrust and fear that patients with alleged symptoms might be using unreliable hospitals as their hiding places, the German authorities ordered ever more control measures. [18] Hospitals in means of transportation were a further type of medical facility. On the other hand, hostility and established stereotypes about the Other also persisted or were reinforced. Another type of hospital in the rear was the prisoner-of-war hospital. They represented ambivalent intermediate areas in which, during the course of the war, different social and military ideas and interests collided. Another issue that would take many years to resolve was the lack of rank given to female doctors as mentioned previously was detrimental in their care as it undermined their authority. Alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from Orthopaedics and Disabled Soldiers in Germany and Britain in the First World War, in: Medicine, Conflict and Survival 30 (2014), pp. Therefore, civilian hospitals did not only lack space and medical staff, but also medical equipment.[31]. Carden-Coyne, The Politics of Wounds 2014, pp. 355-360. Although field hospitals (as was the case for all military hospitals) were theoretically protected by international law,[12] they were still occasionally bombed, albeit seldomly on purpose.[13]. Silence, Stories and Soldiers Bodies, in: Cornish, Paul / Saunders, Nicholas (eds. Hospitals were also crucial parts of soldiers war experiences. In this way, the temporary hospitalisation of soldiers became a mass phenomenon of World War I. Whilst the trenches carried with them a decidedly masculine connotation, central metaphors used in patients diaries to describe home front clinics were purity, silence, and motherliness/femininity. ): War Time. Life in hospital was characterized by recurrent medical routines. This is particularly problematic say France like Salonika in East Africa. Chief amongst them were artillery shells and other sorts of weapons projectiles which splintered into pieces of shrapnel, and these accounted for approximately 60% of all wounds. 187-188. In most warring countries, relief agencies, charity institutions, companies, and individuals committed themselves to supporting military medicine and hospital treatment. For some soldiers, hospitals at home became places of longing and they tried to inhabit these spaces for as long as possible, trying to avoid being sent back to the front at all costs. [1] From the authorities perspective, this came down to each and every soldier, as no potential fighting capacity could be wasted or allowed to lie fallow. [9] In the British army, CCSs were the main medical facilities behind the front lines. The Representation of the People Act 1918 granted the vote to all men over the age of 21, and 8.5m women . Patients were usually transferred to a stationary or general hospital at a base for further treatment. Increasingly, this general military distrust of civilians in hospital care culminated in accusations stating that auxiliary hospitals were impeding the rapid recovery of soldiers and hence obstructing the national war effort. Accession Number: P03166.001. 2 April 2014. In spite of racial barriers, Indigenous women served with U.S. and Canadian forces in the horrors of the Great War as nurses in military hospitals near the front. Trench warfare allowed for this chain of medical care but in the likes of Gallipoli, arrangements were far less satisfactory and in that case there was a failure of planning as well, a failure to plan for the number of casualties, a failure to plan for evacuating the wounded by sea, and ultimately this was subject to a subsequent investigation. Our biggest fear at the hospital was seeing infection, such . [22] In any case, such auxiliary hospitals were directly subordinated to a hospital run by the military in order to maintain as much military control as possible. Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War, Oxford et al. Schleich, Carl Ludwig: Zwei Jahre kriegschirurgischer Erfahrungen aus einem Berliner Lazarett, Stuttgart et al. Studies of British hospitals have shown, however, that many patients made enormous efforts to hide their pain and only articulated it in diaries. 15-35. Much more commonly, injured men would be labelled up for evacuation and moved back down the line. The representative function of hospitals played an especially important role in Germany. Now if it hadn't been for that loop of wire those two bullets would have been between my shoulder blades and I wouldn't be here now.". 117-123. They operated close to the front lines, and so took nurses into the danger zone.

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