Bringing in the wounded, WWI

[Pat Holscher]

A photo of a training exercise, Australian Light Horse, WWI, Middle East.



Photograph Courtesy of Australian War Memorial, www.awm.gov.au No reproduction without permission of AWM.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

Here's a photo of wounded actually being conveyed by Light Horse in WWI:


Photograph Courtesy of Australian War Memorial, http://www.awm.gov.au No reproduction without permission of AWM.

Pat

[Robert Dunlop]

Initially, the wounded were transported by cacolets, a hideous form of torture that comprised stretchers slung either side of a camel. It was so unpleasant that two troopers are recorded as having ridden back to treatment stations with broken thighs rather than be transported in this manner. Carts and wagons were of no value in the heavy sand. So with true Outback ingenuity, the Aussies developed sleds by folding up the front of a sheet of corrugated iron. This was usually pulled by two horses. Not an official solution but very effective. As to numbers, I have no information but I bet a few dunnies had to go without doors and/or walls



Robert

[Pat Holscher]

Not WWI, but along the border in the teens. Photos from the Runyon collection at The Library of Congress, and the University of Texas, where these URLs are located:

Ambulances along the border:

http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN00000 ... N00892.JPG


Pat

[G. A. Mackinlay]

Re the photo of the sledge, the sledge has got nothing to do with Australian ingenuity.
They were first seen in the British Army in the Penisular. The first
handbook of the Army Hospital Corps (the other rank predecessor of the Royal
Army Medical Corps) shows them exactly. They were however only useful when
used on sandy type soil and on the flat, their effectiveness dropped off
when climbing hills and such like. Always drawn by two horses. They
developed from travois, that the British Army had used in North America, and
in variant forms used right up to Korea.

In regard to cacolets, the story the gentleman recorded is somewhat
incorrect. In western medicine they were first recorded in use when the
very efficient French medical service took them up when Bonapart invaded
Egypt. The medical organisations of the British Army used them right up to
the second world war, the last recorded use by the RAMC being in Ethiopia
when medical teams attached to Wingate's Patriots used them. I actually saw
them in use in northern Somalia in 1993.

The issue cacolet as used during the Great War in the Sinai, Palestine etc
(as well as in the campaigns in Iraq and the North West Frontier of India in
the inter-war years) was a well designed capsule (in lack of a better word)
complete with sunscreen, water bag holder, the patient was not on a
stretcher but a form of canvas hammock that was strapped onto the capsule
frame, the actual hammock having restraining straps to hold the patient in.

As a very young Army Apprentice in the RAMC Apprentice College, I have vivid
memories in the early 1960's of one Major General Barnsley (who ran the
corps museum), he as a young regimental medical officer had served with the
Yeomanry in campaigns of 1917-18, and enthused about the use of cacolets.
His description being that the methodical tread of the camel allowed a
reasonable ride for the wounded and sick (more of them than the other).
With such wounds as abdominal, or fracture femurs, no matter how you moved
them they would be in pain and discomfort, and of course you could not give
them too much morphia as it would kill them!!! In his personal opinion (be
being both a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College
of Physicians, so rather a bright person) you had a better chance of
survival on a cacolet, than you did on a Model T Ford ambulance (solid
wheels, and rudimentary springs).

Even in this modern age of helicopters and extremely well sprung multi-drive
ambulances, the victim of trauma is in pain. The great advantage being of
course they get to sophisticated medical facilities and survive.

Yorus,
G/.

[G. A. Mackinlay]

The other night on Australia's multi-cutural TV Channel (SBS) there was a news item
relating to the current fighting in The Sudan.

A French camera team was filming the evacuation of Dufur tribespeople away
from the attacking Arab muslim forces, no motor transport visible, just
donkeys, horses, camels (in the main) and pushbikes. With their severely
wounded being evacuated on cacolets!

Yours,
G/.

[Robert Dunlop]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by G. A. Mackinlay</i>
<br />Re the photo of the sledge, the sledge has got nothing to do with Australian ingenuity. They were first seen in the British Army in the Penisular.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

The concept of a sledge was not unique. But making use of corrugated iron in different ways is something that is a characteristic of farming Downunder, as is the multifarious uses of bailing twine. Not sure it would have been around at the time of the Pennisular War?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">As a very young Army Apprentice in the RAMC Apprentice College, I have vivid memories in the early 1960's of one Major General Barnsley (who ran the corps museum), he as a young regimental medical officer had served with the Yeomanry in campaigns of 1917-18, and enthused about the use of cacolets. His description being that the methodical tread of the camel allowed a reasonable ride for the wounded and sick (more of them than the other).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Absolutely no disrespect intended but I would guess that Maj Gen Barnsley never rode in a cacholet with a broken femur. One has to be very cautious about medical professionals interpretations of the effectiveness or otherwise of treatments, particularly with respect to painful procedures. As you know, any movement of a fractured long bone is excrutiatingly painful. Furthermore, it accelerates blood loss, with consequent increase in morbidity and mortality. If a sledge were stable and offered a relatively smooth ride across sand, then it would be significantly preferable to even rhythmic movement.

Robert

[Kelton Oliver]

True, Robert, but if the choice were between a cacholet and a 1914 Ford, I'm pretty sure most wounded would choose the cacholet.

[Robert Dunlop]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Kelton Oliver</i>
<br />True, Robert, but if the choice were between a cacholet and a 1914 Ford, I'm pretty sure most wounded would choose the cacholet.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I would totally agree!

[G. A. Mackinlay]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Robert Dunlop</i>
<br />The concept of a sledge was not unique. But making use of corrugated iron in different ways is something that is a characteristic of farming Downunder, as is the multifarious uses of bailing twine. Not sure it would have been around at the time of the Pennisular War?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Corrugated iron was invented in Bristol in 1840, by Brunel. And quickly was
used for a multitute of purposes., you can see photos of the Crimea war with
it being used for buildings, horse shelters, washing tables, sledges,
reinforcements in trenches. My 1896 copy of The Royal Engineers Handbook
gives multitudes of uses including the manufacture of sledges, the drawing
shown exactly that of the sledges used in the Peninsular in 1812-13, and
that in the original photo.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
Absolutely no direspect intended but I would guess that Maj Gen Barnsley never rode in a cacholet with a broken femur. One has to be very cautious about medical professionals interpretations of the effectiveness or otherwise of treatments, particularly with respect to painful procedures. As you know, any movement of a fractured long bone is excrutiatingly painful. Furthermore, it accelerates blood loss, with consequent increase in morbidity and mortality. If a sledge were stable and offered a relatively smooth ride across sand, then it would be significantly preferable to even rhythmic movement.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

What can one say, it is very difficult for lay persons to comprehend medical
history, especially since the average person cannot understand what a
medical practitioner says to them when they go into a examination room.
Also whilst many modern day medical practitioners are pretty awful, those of
previous generations were not, they in the main, intelligent, inovative and
caring persons who belived in the concept of patient care.

Firstly I must state that pain is vital for wounded and/or severly
traumatised persons, pain keeps people alive. The use of morphia in it's
early years killed more than it saved, until the correlation of the patient
drifting off into a stupor from which they never recovered due to the
supression of the breathing process. Experimentation then showed you only
gave enough morphia, to remove the severe edge of the pain without affecting
the respiration process, this then kept the patient alive. Cruel in order
to survive!

General Barnsley who I mistakenly described as being a Member, when in
actual fact he was a Fellow of both the Royal Colleges of Surgeon's, and
Physician's, was as I initially said a regimental medical officer with the
Yeomanry regiments in the final campaigns in the Sinai and Palestine,
receiving the Military Cross for his gallantry in the field. Not only a
very bright man but, an extremely humane one. In the interwar years he was
at the forefront of developing techniques of casualty evacuation, air
ambulances, the developement of springed ambulances to allow a more
comfortable movement of casualties (he initially proposed in the 1920's that
all axles of a ambulance be fitted with double wheels to enhance the smooth
movement of the vehicle).

With a fractured femur, once the limb is stabilised there is little pain if
the patient remains still. For this purpose one Hugh Owen Thomas
(1834-1891), a surgeon of Liverpool, when discussing with Army Regimental
surgeons the problems of fractured femurs over the years with the assistance
of the future Army Medical Department developed the Thomas Splint. This a
open frame, to which a fractured femur was inserted, the ankle joint taped
and with pressure pulled down, at the top of the splint there is a padded
circular restraint this allowing the pressure to kept the two parts of the
fracture open. The TS is still in use today, unchanged from 130 odd years
ago. Although normally in a casualty department/fracture clinic more modern
and sophisticated pieces of equipment are used, but, in the mass casualty
situation it remains the item of choice.

Barnsley had developed in the 1930's a means of using the TS to safely
transport patients over hard conditions and long distances safely, this
entailing a immobilizing split plaster cast applied from the foot to the
groin, with skin traction tapes bored through the plaster and attached to
the TS. First widely used during the siege of Tobruk in 1941, it became
known as the Tobruk Splint and is still used as a emergency device today.

As I said re the cacolet, it is a 'capsule' type device with the patient
contained in a hammock (the British Army version), a hammock which is of
course always attached to rings irrespective of the use is a smooth means of
rest (having started life off as a deck apprentice going from Southhampton
to the Cape, and having used hammocks at sea on a number of occassions
since, I can confirm that even in the worse storm in the Bay of Biscay, you
have a comfortable ride in a hammock). Having over the years read the
experiences of men who served in the Eastern Campaigns of the Great War
Sudan/Somaliland, Sinai/Palestine, Mesopotamia ect, and they having been
wounded, their writing do not reflect that the use of a cacolet was a
taumatic event - of course their pain of wounds or illness was, but the
means of transportation was for that time acceptable.

In regard to using corrogated iron as a sledge, you would find that the
abrasive effect of sand would quickly wear the metal down. But, in regard
to the deserts of the Sinai and Palestine where the fighting occurred -
having whilst posted to UNTSO I with many others performed battle walks
through the various areas, the desert there is not beautiful Lawrence of
Arabia flowing sand, but, what we call in Australia - Gibber, a rocky,
sandy, gravelly and generally yucky piece of real estate. If I was a
wounded man, I would have hated to have been dragged on a corrogated iron
sledge over such ground, it would have been a nightmare!

Another problem with corrogated iron is when dragged along ground it creates
static electricity, it was discovered in the 1930's that static electricity
would cause cardiac arrythmias when a human being was placed on say a table
that had such, and was not earthed - said person would die. That is why
such as modern ambulances, hospital beds etc are earthed.

As I said in the initial message, I saw in Somalia in use in 1993. Having
seen the patients at close range, - they usually in a pretty severe mess,
with little or no modern medical intervention being applied as treatment -
there is no doubt in my mind that their transportation was not a cause of
further trauma to them.

Yours,
G/.

[Pat Holscher]

The reason I linked this old thread in:

Just past noon, five more Sherman tanks trundled into the fight, each towing an O'Daniel brainstorm: "battle sleds," fabricated in great secrecy from torpedo tubes sawed in half lengthwise, with steel runners welded to the bottom. Eight feet long, two feet wide, and just deep enough to carry a prostrate, nervous soldier, the sleds were joined end to end, six to a train, with each tank dragging two trains. Ditches and mines proved their undoing. Hardly had sixty sleds slid onto the stage than they could slide no farther; the riders spilled out, grateful to take their chances dismounted.

The Day of Battle, page 541.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

Bumped up due to related thread.

[Pat Holscher]

http://data2.archives.ca/ap/a/a000680.jpg

[Pat Holscher]

http://digital.nls.uk/first-world-war-o ... d=74546550

[Pat Holscher]

French ambulance troops.

[Pat Holscher]

Russian wounded, World War One.

[Tom Muller]

Pat,

I believe they are German. Look at the caps, collar on the soldier on the left and the belt buckle plus jackboots are typical German of the WWI time frame.

Regards

Tom

[Pat Holscher]

Pat,

I believe they are German. Look at the caps, collar on the soldier on the left and the belt buckle plus jackboots are typical German of the WWI time frame.

Regards

Tom

I think you are right. And looking at the writing on the photo on the left, the wounded men must be POWs. So the wounded would be the Russian POWs in the wagon.

[Pat Holscher]

Ambulances heading south from Columbus New Mexico, Punitive Expedition.