Abstract
This chapter highlights the stateside training experiences for those who would become front line medics, 1944–45. Lessons learned from World War I should have alerted World War II planners to possible medical and evacuation problems, but medical soldier training regimens from 1920 to 39 reveal that the Army continued to marginalize Medical Department combat preparedness. Instead, the Army designed training programs to forge a standardized medical soldier who could be plugged in anywhere along the chain of evacuation. The unimaginative trainingshort-changed the battlefield medics.
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Notes
All quotes from Questionnaire, Winson; Harry McClain, “A Night’s Sleep Ushers Draftee into the Army,” Chicago Daily Tribune (12 April 1943), p. 2; Unit Annual Report, “Camp Grant, Illinois 1943,” Box 220, Record Group 112, National Archives and Records Administration. Depository and reference codes used hereafter are as follows: RG (Record Group); UAR (Unit Annual Report); MTP (Mobilization Training Program); FM (Field Manual); TM (Technical Manual); NARA (National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland); MHI (Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania); and EC (Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans).
United States (1991) United States Army in the World War, 1917–19, Volume 15 (Washington DC: Center of Military History), pp. 370–371.
C. Lynch, J. Ford, and F. W. Weed (1925) The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, Volume VIII (Washington: GPO), pp. 13–19;
United States (1989) United States Army in the World War, 1917–19, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History) and Volume 4, p. 530.
From the end of World War I until mobilization field forces included Regular Army, the National Guard, and the Organized Reserves. The National Defense Act amended in 1920 reduced the Medical Department from wartime strength of ten percent to five percent. R. R. Taylor, W. S. Mullins, R. J. Parks (1974) Medical Training in World War II (Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General), pp. 1–11;
K. R. Greenfield, R. R. Palmer, and B. I. Wiley, (1947, 2004) The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army), p. 1.
UAR, “Camp Barkeley 1942–1945.” “Camp Robinson 1943,” “Camp Grant 1942–1943” and “Camp Lee/Pickett 1942–1943,’ RG 112, NARA; Taylor, Mullins, and Parks, Medical Training, pp. 174–197, 264; R. L. Sanner (1995) Combat Medic Memoirs: Personal World War II Writings and Pictures (Clemson, SC: Rennas Productions);
R. “Doc Joe” Franklin A (2006) Medic! How I Fought World War II with Morphine, Sulfa, and Iodine Swabs (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), p. 2; Questionnaires, Gerald W. Allen (25 March 2001), Charles C. Cross (10 June 2001), David E. Fought (7 April 2001), Frank J. Irgang (March 2001) and Winson.
All quotes from Robert Reed to parents, 21 August 1943. in Reed’s possession. Reed trained with the 3nth Infantry Regiment; United States, Army, 78th Division (1947) Lightning: The Story of the 78th Infantry Division (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press), pp. 7–19.
L. Litwak (2001) The Medic: Life and Death in the Last Days of World War II (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books), pp. 25–30.
P. H. Hostetter (1999) Doctor and Soldier in the South Pacific (Versailles, MO: B-W Graphics), “armloads” p. 14 and pp. 6–30.
FM 7–30, (1 June 1944) “Service Company and Medical Detachment (Supply and Evacuation) Infantry Regiment” (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office).
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© 2013 Tracy Shilcutt
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Shilcutt, T. (2013). Chalkboard Training. In: Infantry Combat Medics in Europe, 1944–45. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347695_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347695_2
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