The Journey of the Wounded

The stretcher-bearers would collect the wounded from ‘no man’s land’ and they would be transported to the Regimental Medical Post where the RMO’s would stabilize the wounded. They would have then moved the wounded to a Field Ambulance. The journey would be about 1000 yards or even more and the conditions were quite terrible as the ground was very rough and the wounded if they were lucky, had to make do with being in a horse drawn ambulance if it was ever available to take them to the nearest station. Now for safety and shelter, the wounded and medical staff had to make do with tents as these were needed to hold about 200 beds and they needed surgeons to staff the recovery tents and to perform much needed operations.

Once the wounded were stabilized and safe to transfer, the staff would move them, by rail, to certain hospitals in major port cities. There aim was to make sure that the wounded would be able and fit to return to their active service as soon as possible. But however, if the wounded were too baldy injured, the staff had the unfortunate decision to send the wounded back home to Britain.