Episodes & Studies Volume 1
Advanced Dressing Station
Advanced Dressing Station
The wounded, attended in transit by a medical orderly, were delivered at the Advanced Dressing Station by New Zealand Army Service Corps drivers. Ambulance cars were the usual means of transport. They gave a patient a smoother journey and a greater feeling of security than an open jeep. Valuable assistance to the Field Ambulances’ own cars was often provided by drivers and vehicles of the American Field Service. This volunteer unit was serving in the Middle East before the United States entered the war, and it was associated with the New Zealand Division from the fateful days in the desert in 1942, the drivers cheerfully accepting the risks of the forward areas and giving tireless and outstanding service.
The Advanced Dressing Station, at which there were normally three medical officers and sixty men from the Field Ambulance, was usually not far from the line. The duties of the staff were to receive battle casualties from the Regimental Aid Posts, adjust wound dressings, immobilise fractures with splinting, relieve pain and shock and give blood transfusions to the more seriously wounded. Even the worst cases responded magnificently to the blood transfusions. Thus resuscitated, the wounded were made comfortable for the journey to the Main Dressing Station. No operative treatment was done at the Advanced Dressing Station except for the control of serious bleeding and the removal of an almost severed limb. As at the Regimental Aid Post, there was a constant urge to get the casualty to the operating centre with the utmost speed consistent with safety.
The company forming the Advanced Dressing Station had the mobility of the nomads of the desert. Its duties were to keep up with the brigade as it advanced, to be ready to set up a miniature emergency hospital to admit wounded at any time, and to undertake urgent treatment, being careful always to limit the surgical nature of its work so as to preserve the unit’s mobility. If called upon to move again, it was able to pack up and be on the move in half an hour. If it still held patients it might be necessary to leave a detachment to care for them until they were cleared to the Main Dressing Station. Mobility was an essential feature of the desert campaigns, especially when the Division engaged in its famous ‘left hooks’, and was a highlight of the final advance in Italy from the Senio River to Trieste.
The company adapted itself to the topography of the country as well as to the needs of the battle in setting up its dressing station. In Greece it had first used dugouts burrowed into the hillside and concealed under canvas and cut scrub. Vehicles were parked under natural cover some distance away. Red Crosses were not usually displayed by the medical units at this stage. When it was established that the enemy respected the Geneva Convention, prominent Red Crosses were painted on tents and vehicles. An Advanced Dressing Station was set up on Mount Olympus, and in the withdrawal the wounded were treated under the leafy camouflage of olive trees. Again, in Crete, the olive trees gave protection from the unchallenged and ever-active Luftwaffe.
In the Western Desert, tarpaulins fixed over and around three-ton trucks formed the reception and evacuation wards of the Advanced Dressing Station. The Italian terrain in the winter presented difficulties and caused privations. At the Sangro one Advanced Dressing Station was set up among thickets of bamboo, the men digging themselves and their bivouac tents into the muddy page 7 banks of a tributary of the river, trying to shelter from the frequent heavy rainstorms which made the days dismal and the nights cold. In the slow-moving war in Italy a night barrage would throw the tarpaulin shelters and vehicles of the Advanced Dressing Station into a flickering silhouette, and overhead the air would throb with the roar of outgoing shells. Inside the shelters (or in one of the war-battered buildings which became almost indispensable in the winter of 1944 in Northern Italy) the sterile instruments were laid out ready and the orderlies on duty waited the first casualties from the impending attack. As the Regimental Aid Posts sent in the wounded a rush might develop; at times the wounded would be cold and exhausted, urgently needing warmth and blood transfusions to prepare them for the next stage of their journey—on to the Main Dressing Station.
THE RESUSCITATION DEPARTMENT AT 4 MDS, FAENZA
‘The distance to the MDS was short and we reached it at ten o’clock. It was in a commercial bank building in Faenza. Here I was examined once more. My pulse registered 140 and I was placed in the resuscitation department, where I was given a blood plasma transfusion with morphia included in the drip feed. The transfusion brought my pulse down to 110 and I was considered fit for further evacuation, this time to the Casualty Clearing Station. The plasma bottle was fitted on the side of the stretcher and the transfusion continued while I was travelling.’page 8 page 9
TAKING MEDICAL SUPPLIES ACROSS THE LAMONE RIVER, FAENZA
RAP Carrier, near the Senio
RAP Jeep, from the Sangro
5 NZ Field Regiment Aid Post, Orsogna
Labelling wounded men’s packs, Rimini
Advanced Dressing Stations
BRITISH AND ENEMY WOUNDED
OFF THE RAILWAY ROUTE NEAR MOUNT PORCHIA, Cassino
At Four Main Dressing Stations
4 NZ FIELD AMBULANCE AT KATERINE, Greece
The reception tent is to the right of the ambulance
MDS IN A WADI, near Sidi Rezegh
This station was captured and remained in enemy hands for eight days
A FIELD SURGERY—two vans backed together, Alamein
A FIELD OPERATING THEATRE
—a surgical team applies a Thomas splint, Cassino
6 NZ FIELD AMBULANCE, Greece
Result of enemy aircraft action
FIELD OPERATING THEATRE, Alamein
NEW ZEALAND NURSING SISTERS AT A CCS, Cyrenaica
UNLOADING AN AMBULANCE CAR AT 3 NZ GENERAL HOSPITAL, Bari
Casualty Clearing Stations
AN AERIAL VIEW OF 1 NZ MOBILE CCS on a bypass of the main road, near Cassino. The theatres and administration tents are on the left by the road, and the wards on the right
VOLUNTARY AIDS, 3 NZ GENERAL HOSPITAL, Bari
A SISTER, 2 NZ GENERAL HOSPITAL, Caserta
A MASSEUSE, Bari
A MEDICAL OFFICER ON HIS ROUNDS, Bari