WW1 Medical Kits

During the WW1 there were 3 types of medical equipment that were available to the soldiers in the field.

‘Small First Aid Kit’ was the very first basic kit of field dressing. Typically soldiers would be required to carry this in their special pocket of the uniform. Protection of these med kits was extremely important, so they created a sealed waterproof package with 2 identical gauze dressings inside. The concept being is that the soldiers own dressing was used on him if he was unlucky enough to need it.

‘Medium First Aid Kit’ is considered to be very similar to a Stretcher-bearer’s haversack. A stretcher-bearer was a very important role during the war as it was the soldier’s job to follow the advance behind and bring the wounded back into their home trenches and into the aid station. They considered this to be a very dangerous job as the soldiers would call it ‘going into no-man’s land’ even when the battle was over. Stretcher-bearers were not armed at all, so the pick of people who wanted to carry out this job, were to be very specific. They wanted people who had religious/moral objections to killing. The haversacks would contain a more varied selection in dressings, which included a larger gauze shell dressing which would be used to cover shrapnel wounds. Stretcher-bearers had to receive medical training before they took up the job, but the training had improved considerably. Normally there were 18 stretcher-bearers per battalion consisting of 700 men.

‘Top First Aid Kit’ came from the Regimental Medical Officer. A qualified doctor who oversaw the care of the battalion. This particular officer would be the subject of dangerous exposer to shellfire and other hazards on the frontline. On the frontline about 740 British RMO were killed during 1914-1918. RMO’s were considered to be very similar to stretch-bearers as they were also unarmed. They had what they called a ‘wicker pannier’, which was a larger range of medical equipment, which included splints, syringes (with either ampoules/morphine). The most important job for them to do was to stabilize the wounded and to make sure that they were ready for transportation back to the rear lines. RMO’s would have been the very first qualified doctor’s in the war but unfortunately only a tiny few even had prior experience with the wounds that they would have to deal with in the war. Most medical personal were general practitioners, so they hardly had any experience of these kinds of casualties as they mostly dealt with coughs and sneezes rather than machine gun wounds.