Medical Department in Army

The medical department plays a large role in the Army. Some may not realize how big of a role they actually play. From World War Two until present this paper seeks to give a better understanding of how the medical department played its role in past wars, special jobs and tasks that the medical detachment was given, and how the roles of the medical detachment have changed over time.

On the 7th of December 1941 the Second World War broke out between the

United States and Japan, Germany and Italy. There were fewer than seven thousand active duty nurses at the time the war broke out. Six months after declaring war, the number of active duty nurses jumped to over twelve thousand (Feller). Not only were nurses effected, but over eight hundred thousand military and civilian personnel were called upon to serve (Ginn). What this meant was the war was so large and powerful that more people were being commissioned and more civilian doctors and physicians were called in to help with the specialty positions that were difficult to fill by medics and nurses.

The role that the medical department played during World War Two and the Korean War was not just behind enemy lines, as most people would suspect. Sergeants found themselves setting up aid stations and at times acting as the battalion surgeon. Back at the Medical Battalion, Dentists held the administrative positions (Cowdry). During World War Two, ambulance platoon leaders kept their ambulances "as close to the front lines as possible" (Ginn). The reason for this was due to the mortality rate produced by the war. Death rates continued to rapidly increase throughout the combat. At one point during the war "increasing casualty loads created a resurgence of demand," this forced the OCS (officer candidate schools) to resume full operation (Ginn). In other words, when the war started and medical personnel were still far below the operations requirement; the medical department began sending potential officers to the OCS. Their thinking was that this school would be more efficient with the training that the officers would receive and would get the officers into the battle and working in the medical units that much quicker.

The route of action that the medical support was involved in was similar to that of World War One. In combat zones the plan for evacuation and treatment was something like the following: "Three echelons of medical support further divided into smaller other echelons. The first echelon was the Combat zone, which was then divided into three echelons. 1. the regimental medical detachment's company aid men and aid stations, 2. the clearing company and three collecting companies of the division medical battalion, and 3. was the evacuation hospitals of the field army. The second echelon was the communication zone, which had numbered stations and general hospitals. The third and final echelon was the zone