Surgical Cases

Field hospitals worked in conjunction with a division’s clearing station. Divisional clearing stations were the most forward medical facilities where wounded soldiers were evaluated. The less seriously wounded would be sent back to evacuation hospitals, typically 20 miles or so behind the line. The more seriously wounded—deemed “non-transportable”—would be sent to a field hospital, located within litter-carrying distance of the clearing station. Although the field hospitals had their own medical personnel, the operating rooms were controlled—and all surgery performed—by teams of the auxiliary surgical groups. Each “Aux” team consisted of a head surgeon, an assistant surgeon, an anesthetist, an operating room nurse, and two enlisted medical technicians. By the end of 1944, there were five Auxiliary Surgical Groups, each consisting of about 25 teams, in the European Theater of Operations.

Although field hospitals set up in buildings when possible, more often they used the tents they carried with them. As the war progressed, they determined that the most effective tent configuration was in the form of a cross. The four “arms” of the cross were receiving and shock at the main entrance, x-ray and laboratory opposite to shock, the operating room, and, opposite to the OR, the recovery ward. Such an arrangement made heating more efficient, eliminated the need to move patients from one tent to another in inclement weather, and was easier to black out.

The surgery performed in field hospitals was emergency work, intended to save the soldier’s life by addressing serious, even ghastly, trauma. If necessary, more complicated reparative surgery could then be performed later in the rear at evacuation or general hospitals. By the end of the war, the 2nd Aux had treated more than 22,000 non-transportable cases with a record of survival that was remarkable, considering the severity of the injuries they encountered.