WW2 Medic - US Army First Aid Men

[Music] good afternoon and welcome to the box Kali museum's super World War two weekend and this is going to be a stock short very short lecture on military medical programs that took place with the United States department medical services during the Second World War we're going to dispel something first of all they were not called medics not at all the appropriate term is eight-man derived from the term first aid man each platoon had at least one aid man there are three platoons to accompany so therefore approximately three eight men 275 280 individual soldiers how did this start well the United States Army in World War one really didn't have a medical department it was considered fairly unnecessary but with the battle carnage in World War one the United States started to form the medical department the medical department was a short small department within the United States Army it was considered very independent in fact when the second world war broke out and you were an aid man in the field you had two masters the first was your company officer we reported to him directly the second was to the ranking officer the medical department assigned to whatever regiment or division you belong to so therefore if you are into a situation where the medical officer gave you an order and your company officer gave you an order who are you going to listen to medical personnel carry no command authority none their only physician is within their own group so it's very difficult to be an aide may be extremely and being a man who necessarily did not have to have a medical background there were some aid men who are drafted into the army who had worked in the Chicago stockyards and the only reason they were drafted into the medical department was basically they had seen blood seemed flesh dismembered and what is a soldier on a battlefield who's been wounded but nothing more than a completely dismembered piece of flesh that's the way they thought of us know when you come into the Army it's dependent upon what you can do you are given a test this to where you might fit in kind of like in the modern MOS system but think about this the United States has been attacked by Axis powers on December 7 1941 which dragged American little war and the stupid Germans declared war on us when they didn't have to well you have no real medical department you have to bring these guys in what's your opinion of somebody who cannot or will not pick up a weapon and fight when your country has been attacked obviously there are words for people like that and they're used but because the United States was a signatory to the second Geneva Convention which stated that medical personnel are not allowed to carry offensive weaponry onto a field while we can't carry weapons so all these guys the First Division are out there learning how to shoot doing tactics and having a great time I'm stuck in a classroom I'm learning anatomy I'm learning pharmacology I'm learning everything there is to know about what I need to do on a battlefield and in the situation that I'm in obviously when it comes time to go to town guess who doesn't get invited because I'm not there buddy I'm the guy who sits in the corner of the room well that's not very good let us say for the sake of time and everything that we've gone through our field training I've been assigned to a platoon and now we are shipped overseas our overseas assignment is in England so we are transported to a place called Fort Dix New Jersey where we go through basic refitting are placed on a freighter and of course this is not a a ship like a cruise ship is today this is a freighter there are bunks built into the whole it's 18 inches deep all the way to the top and there are not enough bunks for everybody on the ship so while people are up on deck enjoying the deck there are people in these bunks sleeping and when it's their time to come down and sleep the guys get out of the bunks go back up to the deck and the guys on the deck slide into these bunks say it's called hot bunking the sheets and the bedding is never cold the entire trip overseas it's always warmed with somebody else's body either think about how that feels well let's say I get a soldier comes up to me he says I get seasick I have a problem what's the problem if I go to an officer to put on sick call they're gonna write down that I get seasick invasions are from the sea they may not want me on a boat I don't want that I want to fight so of course I go into my stores and I pull out Dramamine tablets and I give them the disguise now all of a sudden I'm not so bad a guy I'm kind of like starting to come a buddy here well we get the England we get off the boat in England they put us on trucks they ship us 60 miles north of London for six months we're going to training that training is preparing everybody to go into Normandy at the time I also prepared I need to know what my place is in the medical department and how it's going to work as a field aid man it's going to be a little different than a doctor or an orderly or anybody who works in the hospital system my job is patch them up move em on it's quick well after bouts let's say six months of being out in the field and not having any leave we get a pass where are we going to go we're going to go to London and of course the first place we're all going to hit being good soldiers is the local pie now there's advantages and disadvantages to local Pompeii one of the advantages disadvantages is that the beer is served very warm the advantages it comes in fights so you get lots more of it well let us just say that our poor soldiers who have been down there are having a great time at this pub the proprietor calls lights out they leave then one soldier leaves with a young lady her husband has been with Montgomery in the North Africa now for a year she hasn't heard from him she doesn't know if he's alive or dead he bought her a beer she's cried on his shoulder and invites him up to her place the next morning he goes back to camp four days later he has the worst case of a venereal disease you ever had in your life he didn't take precautions so he has to go to a thing called a pro station that's where we do all kinds of interesting things which I don't think it's good for a camera more for some of the younger members of your viewing audience here but instead of going to a doctor they're going to come to the medic I really don't want to get put on report I'm gonna tell him a secret their pickets on these soldiers belts and in those packets as a Carlile bandage ten wound templates and a powdered drug called sulfanilamide it's also called everything from sulphate drug to Snuppy Smith according to these soldiers it is an antibiotic it's a byproduct of aniline dye production that the Germans discovered before the war it kills germs so what I'm going to tell them is you take that packet out open it up take the ten wound tablets out and you take one of those wounds Hammett's every two hours until they're gone then come and see me in a couple of days the antibiotic and his sofa truck will knock out whatever he's got now not only am I just as buddy I'm one of his closest friends because he doesn't have a problem anymore so we go ahead and we take care of that for him I'm starting to become integrated into the unit that I'm with finally we move into France we're very lucky we don't go on the first day three or four days later I'm moving forward with my group and of course why we're told to dig in before we go into the hedgerow country well there's a lot of ways you can do that you could use a shovel you could dig with a bayonet mostly shovels are good you dig a hole about four feet deep four feet wide four feet across tomb into a hole it's nice it's comfy well you know what happens poor soldier has to use a latrine and there's a way to do that one you can dig a hole in the bottom of a hole that you're standing in then way you don't expose yourself to enemy fire and then you can cover it back up but guess what happens it rains and what's down that you've just buried bubbles up around your ankles that's not good second method these spine soldiers have helmets that come in two pieces so they take the liner out and they use the shell and when they're done they scoop up some dirt swish it around throw it over the top of the hole and out put the shell back onto the liner and they're perfectly happy the helmet was an all-purpose device the bathroom in it you cook in it you're washing it you dig holes in it you can do anything in it you can make it a chair but this poor soldier obviously it's too stupid to do that so he crawls out of the hole and heads for the woods and the Germans see him and Germans do what Germans do best they aim and fire they wound him in the leg he goes down what's the first thing he's going to scream he's gonna yell medic because obviously his mom's not there to help him and he goes in he's down in the ground I'm in my nice warm hole I'm not getting shot at but guess what guess who's got to go out there and take care of him so basically I'll pick up my rig which consists of a yoke - medic bags in my case one canteen hooks on directly everything I need is in here the hope yoke supports this no problem at all also I will place my helmet on finally supposed to protect me the 10th Mountain Division of which I'm a member had a very distinctive medic insignia large squares with big red crosses no other unit in the United States Army copied this design so basically I can be seen a mile and a half away which is what I want I don't want to shoot at me unfortunately even though medics were considered non-combatants and therefore which somewhat inviolable on the battlefield over two thousand medics were killed in the eto of all trying to tend the troops in fact five won the Congressional Medal of Honor pretending to the truth well I crawl out there on the field and this poor soldier is thrashing around on the ground and I got to stop that from happening so I will reach into my bag and I will pull out a little box and inside this box is a morphine surrett it contains two grains of morphine tartrate comes in a small surrett I'll take off the top I'll push down on the pin to open up the needle throw the pin away and I will inject him the injection is not what you see in the movies nobody goes high Jeff doesn't work like that what we do is we build up a little mound of skin we slide the needle in and then inject him with the morphine tartrate immediately after this is done guess what's going to happen why that soldier is going to see the little bunnies hopping around he's gonna see bluebirds flying over his head he's gonna shut up then I could tend to yell I will take the morphine sûreté and I will pin it to his lapel this tells doctors behind the line that I've already administered the morphine don't do it again morphine is dosed by weight the average soldier is about five feet five to five feet seven weighs anywhere from 130 to 165 pounds average because of that this dosage is good for one man if he gives them a second dose it affects the heart the heart could stop the patient could die one for pain two to put him out of his misery it's pretty much where it works if I can't pin this to his lapel I will dip my finger in some blood with the letter M on his forehead that tells the doctors behind the line don't give him any more that's good if anybody sees my needle down here try to find the next thing I will do is let us say it's a wound in the leg I will tie a tourniquet around the leg to stop the bleeding then I will use one of the devices that's in my backpacks I carry basically bandages morphine sulfa drugs cigarettes and toilet paper I'll take the toilet paper out and I'll wipe the wound down with it it's very absorbent it's more absorbent than a bandage and then I can just toss it away I don't have to deal with it anymore once I viewed the wound I'm not going to stitch him up what I'm going to do is I'm going to remove his bandage from the little pouch here I'm gonna give him the 10 pills in there and I'm gonna say look you got to take one every 10 minutes because right now I don't have the time to walk with you through this over an hour and I know you're not going to do this you know on your own but what does the soldier do he wants to get it all done all over with at the same time he'll take all ten pills and pop up if you've ever had an antibiotic that you've taken too much guess what's going to happen to you within an hour you're going to wind up with the worst case of diarrhea you ever saw in your life and that's what can happen to some of these soldiers I'm going to take the sulfa [Applause] the swamp Hecate I'm gonna tear the picket open I'm gonna dust the lead with it then I'm going to remove his bandage in the small pack I'm going to open it up decompress it I'm going to compress the wound I'm going to tie the bandage off at that point paperwork becomes essential so I'm gonna reach down and I'm going to take out my medics wound book while the bullets are flying I'm gonna try and pull them away get some cover then I'm going to open the book up and I'm gonna fill it out his name is rank his arm of service his age is race that they D was born the day he entered the service location where the wound was the date in the hour that the wound occurred the diagnosis of anything that I've done and any treatments that I've given him I will then rip off one of these with a string I keep a copy in carbon and I will tie this to a button that button will remain with him and the tag will remain with him until he winds up getting either to a battalion aid station or collecting a clearing station when the tag will be replaced by a different ten now when I'm done with this book I have to turn it in if I can find somebody to turn it into but I will then radio behind the line usually two guys on a Jeep come worn up or an ambulance we'd get him away from the line as far as possible stabilized him down I turned him over to the drivers maybe once drivers and I probably will not ever see him again he goes from the line the ade man to a battalion aid station the battalion aid station is nominally a doctor five or six orderlies a box of medicine and a tree you're outside the doctor will examine the wound you'll take a look at it now remember I told you that I can't stitch up a wound there's a thing called gas gangrene when you're wounded not just the bullet goes in but it pushes in clothing it pushes in dirt it pushes in all types of foreign things that are around you on the battlefield so I cannot stitch up the wool now there have been documented cases but it doesn't happen very often then once I've got that if the wound is opening up further I will take safety pins and I will pin that wound together because that way the doctor can open the safety pins and toss him away when he's done and I won't get in trouble for stitching up a woman it takes too long to stitch up a wound out in the field it really does so let's say he gets to the battalion aid station the doctors determined at the battalion aid station that they cannot do any treatment there he's too badly wounded they're going to stabilize him as best they can and they will use one thing to do this way and that is called blood plasma blood plasma replaces the blood lost in the system but unfortunately what plasma does not contain red or white platelets that carry oxygen to the system so basically you're getting fluids but you're not oxygenating the body if we give you too much and we don't get blood in you you could literally suffocate in growing fluids so if we're going to do instead us we're going to give them plasma we're gonna make sure he's stable then they're gonna play submit an ambulance where he's going to be sent to what's called a collecting station at the collecting station he's going to be put into a blue the same way as he is when they get enough people that way they're gonna put them back in an ambulance and send them to a clearing station at the clearing station they're going to decide what hospital you go to there are multiple military hospitals about ten and a half miles behind the lines everywhere so if someone is specializing in thoracic injuries they're going to send you to that hospital while those are going to send you into abdominal injuries that's another type of hospital in my situation but you're going to be transported back there when you get to a field hospital it's kind of looked like what you see on the TV show man unfortunately that is way too small a field hospital would go from the road over there out to the river there all the way back to the line of trees out there multiple tents very large picture a tent city of very large tents there will be assigned to a doctor who will operate on you for whatever purposes whatever type of wounded to have he'll do the best they possibly can if you can be rehabilitated at the field hospital you will be and then you will be sent to a thing called a replacement Depot the soldiers affectionately called it a repla devil and you will be reassigned to somewhere which is probably not where you want to be most soldiers knowing they would be assigned to these repple Devils would do anything to scavenge up enough equipment and transportation to get back to wherever their own unit work you want to be with the people you trained with you don't want to be with people you don't know finally this poor soldier is so wounded that it can no longer take part let's say is wound in the leg is is sufficient we can't do this he will then be assigned to a hospital in the zone of the interior the zone of the interior especially for Northern Europe is even Western France Great Britain southern Italy North Africa or the United States if you're fortunate enough to be sent back the United States you'll be sent back on a freighter a hospital ship will be fairly well marked because we don't want submarines sinking these kind of ships the Germans for the most part honored the Geneva Convention they did not purposely shoot medics they did not purposely shoot wounded soldiers unless of course there were members of the SS which had a very bad reputation for this but other than that Germans were very good at what they did they honored the Geneva Convention now this poor soldier is too wounded to do anything so they put him on a boat he winds up in Brooklyn from Brooklyn he gets transferred to Walter Reed Medical Hospital he comes out of the hospital with the lip can no longer be a soldier but we do need people on the homefront so this soldier now why he gets a job in the shipping industry welding victory ships together makes a ton of money because there's no place to spend it we have no place to buy anything and at the end of the war he's fairly wealthy buys himself a little tract home a North Long Island in a place called Levittown gets married has fifteen or twenty children and lives happily ever after that's the medical story medics were very important to army morale on the ships home after the Second World War the medics for the most part got the best rooms the best food and the best locations on death the soldiers knew who had taken care of them during the course of the war these people were more important than any general or any field commander ever had been to them they made sure that like in the winter your feet were warm that you didn't have trench foot that you're examined regularly that you had everything you possibly need if you had a problem you could go to them rather than to a doctor and they would usually take care of him medics were very important medics were the backbone of the United States Army the United States Medical Department was one of the greatest s-- uses of military personnel that had ever happened in the history of the United States modern medicine evolved directly from Second World War medicine prior to this a doctor was a guy who birthed a baby stitched up the wounds and maybe set a leg on occasion there were no toys no such thing as medics or beat men in the field we were assigned this duty it was an assigned duty for an infantryman and that's what you do so that's the case here behind me you can see quite a number of the different things that would have been in a battalion aid station being Mountain troops as I was we definitely have to know how to work in cold temperatures in a cold temperature balloon starts amusing increases over you don't warm it up you make sure it stays frozen that way the patient won't bleed to death must be able to work on broken legs and broken arms and the cold into the snow without tennis you need to know how to set up wind screens you know how to make sure you know how to evacuate that person by tying sets of skis together on backpacks so that you can slide them down mountains and off the mountains in Europe in Italy where the 10th Mountain Division caught from November 1944 to May of 1945 and suffered 47% casualties in Maddox to the 10th Mountain Division devised a mountain tramway kind of like a ski lift is today that can move you up and down the mountains in your litters so that when you got to the bottom there could be treat on this is the way we got people off the mountains basically what you see here is a foldable stretcher Mountain and unfortunately airborne troops also got to use folding stretchers was easier to transport them the box contains the medicines a pump that you see there is a suction pump this would have been used directly in a field hospital rather than out in the field we need electricity and run it and you have to have electricity generated everything up there including the plasma and most of the bandages from plasma itself is not original but so that gives you a quick explanation does anyone have any questions anything at all doc was it a good job see he's an officer after reporting [Applause] ah there were no extremes regulations for what you put on your helmet helmets were not issued with this on the medics got the helmets and they put their own crosses on and dependent upon what their company officer decided was a good look for them the most common is the force circlet with the processing the 100th infantry division however just use a red cross with a white outline around it because they didn't like to get shot in the Pacific the Japanese were not signatories to the Geneva Convention and therefore their strategy was to shoot the medics first because that way if you got a wounded man who could not be treated I've seen many films of litter bearers trying to carry a man off the field and a Japanese shooting one guy at a time until there were only two left to find he wanted he couldn't get the guy on the field the Navy corpsman as they were called in the Pacific did carry weapons offensive weapons but the only way an aid man in the European theater could carry a firearm was in defense of his patients in case he was being attacked he could not take part in an offensive action using a weapon at all if you were caught with this is one of the worst offenses and you were treated very badly as a prisoner it was a very difficult thing to do well then thanks very much come on up and take a look if you like [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Heinz Thiel

Views: 93,429

Rating: 4.9060054 out of 5

Keywords: World War II (Event), United States Army (Armed Force), World War 2, HRS, Historical, Re-enacting, Society, Heinz Thiel, The Point, WW2 HRS, Press Corps

Id: Uj5GEgxAU9M

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 29 2013