Roles in the RAMC:

[MERLINV12]

Tew,

 

Thanks for the effort you are putting into this.

 

Column 2 says RAMC, column 3 says 32 CCS.

 

Last column (Observations) says 22 ditto, entries above said 22 AT

 

I also saw the Tetanus case and wondered if it might be him.

 

[TEW]

Ok, that seems pretty conclusive that he was on the staff of 32 CCS, at least around June/July 1917 anyway.

 

Could be worth contacting CWGC to see where they got 32 GH from. They may have something that shows it should be 32 CCS or perhaps 32 SH so they should clarify that and correct it.

 

32 SH seems more unlikely as it had been known as Australian Voluntary Hospital until mid-July 1916.

 

I think it's pretty likely he's the tetanus case. From base diary; First death at 2 Can. SH in July was on the 10th, then the tetanus on 15th then one on the 31st is the total for the month.

TEW

[Muerrisch]

This online source may be of interest re Bearers. A huge hyperlink!

 

http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=SLV_VOYAGER220547&indx=161&recIds=SLV_VOYAGER220547&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&rfnGrpCounter=2&dscnt=0&vl(1UIStartWith0)=contains&scp.scps=scope%3A(ROSETTA_OAI)%2Cscope%3A(SLV_VOYAGER)%2Cscope%3A(SLV_DIGITOOL)%2Cscope%3A(SLVPRIMO)&vl(10247183UI0)=any&vid=MAIN&mode=Basic&fctV=[-999999999+TO+1919]&fctV=Great+Britain.+War+Office&fctV=online_resources&rfnGrp=2&rfnGrp=1&rfnGrp=show_only&srt=rank&tab=default_tab&fctN=facet_creationdate&fctN=facet_creator&fctN=facet_tlevel&vl(freeText0)=war pamphlets&dum=true&dstmp=1608736932897

[Myrtle]

22 hours ago, TEW said:

Had been wondering where the RAMC bearer sections fitted into the idea that the RAMC were not used as stretcher bearers on the western front.

 

Found an extract of An equal burden which says;

 

An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher-bearers and orderlies....

 

However, it does say that RAMC were forbidden to carry arms?

 

TEW

According to the Author whose webinar presentation I attended last Friday, the RAMC weren’t used as stretcher bearers at the front in Flanders. 

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, Myrtle said:

According to the Author whose webinar presentation I attended last Friday, the RAMC weren’t used as stretcher bearers at the front in Flanders. 

 

    And my duff memory is leading me a merry dance again-  I seem to recollect that in at least one battalion attack orders read recently, RAMC men were repsonsible for laying out tape lines back to aid posts.  

[Muerrisch]

1 hour ago, Myrtle said:

According to the Author whose webinar presentation I attended last Friday, the RAMC weren’t used as stretcher bearers at the front in Flanders. 

 

As I expect you know, an infantry battalion was designed to use its bandsmen as stretcher bearers in combat. The RMO provided rudimentary training in what we might call First Aid. That might have worked in savage warfare and low intensity, but in practice the large numbers of casualties [including among the bandsmen] and the heavy going very soon meant that the system needed augmentation. How a unit did that seems to have depended on a variety of factors: orders from Brigade, availability of suitable volunteers etc. 9 stone weaklings were not ideal, nor were ardent rifle and bayonet Hun-haters. The regimental SBs were exceptionally brave and attracted many gallantry awards. A stretcher carrying a heavy man could need 6 bearers in heavy going.

 

Either way, their primary battle job was getting the wounded to the Regimental Aid Post, run by the RMO with a very small RAMC orderly staff [I can look this up if needs be].

 

Of course it is possible that trained RAMC men were used on the battlefield during and immediately after combat, but in my opinion that would be a misuse. Never say never, but trained men of the RAMC were better employed at Field Dressing Stations or even further back.

 

This might be useful:

 

https://archive.org/details/b21539224

 

Field service manual, 1913 : Army Medical Service (Expeditionary Force)

Edited 23 December , 2020 by Muerrisch

[TEW]

So the 108 RAMC Bearers within the three Bearer sections of each field ambulance in France were doing what?

TEW

[Muerrisch]

Perhaps they bore stretchers and moved patients, the role of Porters in an NHS hospital.

 

I do have a set of RAMC Manuals in my extensive library. If you are really interested, PM me with specifics and I will have a look, although I suspect that the answer can be no more specific than that, for example, signallers signalled, and drummers drummed.

Edited 23 December , 2020 by Muerrisch

[FROGSMILE]

4 hours ago, TEW said:

So the 108 RAMC Bearers within the three Bearer sections of each field ambulance in France were doing what?

TEW

TEW the boundary between regimental stretcher bearers and the RAMC stretcher bearers was the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) commanded by the Regimental Medical Officer (RMO).  You are therefore absolutely correct that RAMC “bearers” in the bearer sections were exactly that, stretcher bearers!  They had a clearly defined role and were differentiated by their Red Cross badge and arm bands.  Regimental stretcher bearers generally had white brassards with the red letters SB.

Simply put the carriage of wounded from where they were hit to the RAP was a regimental responsibility.  The RAMC bearers then collected them up and carried them from the RAP to the means of evacuation, usually an ambulance.  Sometimes this would be just a short carry, but other times it might be much longer if the ambulances cannot get far enough forward, or are potentially in view of the enemy.  The following paragraph is an extract from a much longer piece explaining in definitive detail the various roles of RAMC personnel, which you can find at this link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541851/

 

“While RAPs were thus under the authority of RMOs, they nonetheless served as the boundary between the collecting and evacuation zones, as well as between the areas of responsibility of the RMO and RAMC Field Ambulances (FAs). As such they formed spaces within which FA Other Ranks found themselves functioning. It was from RAPs that [RAMC] FA stretcher bearers collected wounded men and transported them, via one or more advanced dressing stations run by FA [RAMC] tent orderlies, to the main dressing station, again manned by the [RAMC] tent orderlies of the Field Ambulance. From the dressing station the wounded man would be evacuated, by horse-drawn or, increasingly, motor ambulance, to a CCS, from where, depending on the severity of his injury, he might be discharged to his unit or sent further down the line, by road, rail, or hospital barge, to a Base hospital at a French port city such as Boulogne, Le Havre, or Rouen.”

 

There is also superbly detailed information  here: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/25723/9780192557414_WEB.PDF;jsessionid=4FA749AF46828E1DBC9CF06A188586FC?sequence=1

 

Images courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.

 

Edited 24 December , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[FROGSMILE]

7 hours ago, Myrtle said:

According to the Author whose webinar presentation I attended last Friday, the RAMC weren’t used as stretcher bearers at the front in Flanders. 

I don’t think that’s accurate.  It misunderstands fundamentally the crossover point between the collection zone (regimental bearers) and the evacuation zone (RAMC bearers).  The difference was that the regimental bearers were much closer to the firing line, or what would later be termed the forward edge of the battle area (FEBA).  RAMC bearers tended to carry over shorter distances, but they still carried substantially as evidenced in the images above.  The RAPs and the Field Ambulances had to work hand in glove, and one could not function properly (as intended) without the other.  It mattered not whether Flanders or France, the Brigades and their medical units functioned in the same way.

Edited 24 December , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[Guest]

1 hour ago, FROGSMILE said:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541851/

 

     Wow!!!   Is this the same Great War?

 

 "Foucault’s concept of biopower"

"Heterotopias"

"the spaces of caregiving"

"By taking wounded men out of their narrative trajectories"

"Patient encounters with female carers were represented in popular culture as a longed-for return to domesticity and a reinforcement of peacetime understandings of the gender order"

"hospital spaces were constructed around disciplinary power relationships of surveillance through the clinical gaze and bodily control"

"As both spaces of retreat and spaces of control, therefore, wartime hospitals challenged and reinforced gendered constructs of care"

"the King George Hospital, Waterloo, which boasted a roof garden, the physical spatial boundaries of caregiving institutions were increasingly breached"

 "driven pace, hyper-intense images, repetitions, and fragmentations of the landscape of war into individual sketches’"

 

The photographs are nice enough- though taken nowhere near a front line.

 

    Although there were procedures laid down for both the RAMC chain and -separately-within the plans of infantry battalions, I suspect the reality was that wounded men were got to medical help  by any or all available means and such niceties as the pre-war manuals went out of the window. 

 

[WhiteStarLine]

Wow!!!   Is this the same Great War?

I just read the abstract expecting I would be outraged but it is actually very well done.  The author is writing for a different and more academic audience, just as someone examining cultural changes to society caused by the Great War.

 

His insights into the physical demands, the mental toll and anecdotes such as supporting the now-blinded soldier Briggs as he meets his family again and insists on hanging his jacket on the usual peg before saying a word to the family make this abstract well worth reading.

[Myrtle]

4 hours ago, FROGSMILE said:

I don’t think that’s accurate.  It mattered not whether Flanders or France, the Brigades and their medical units functioned in the same way.

It’s not accurate. It should have read France & Flanders. 
 

[MERLINV12]

11 hours ago, Muerrisch said:

This might be useful:

 

https://archive.org/details/b21539224

 

Thanks , looks to be exactly what I needed, will give me something to study over Christmas.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, WhiteStarLine said:

I just read the abstract expecting I would be outraged but it is actually very well done.  The author is writing for a different and more academic audience, just as someone examining cultural changes to society caused by the Great War.

 

His insights into the physical demands, the mental toll and anecdotes such as supporting the now-blinded soldier Briggs as he meets his family again and insists on hanging his jacket on the usual peg before saying a word to the family make this abstract well worth reading.

 

      Agreed- the author- a she, Jessica Mayer of the University of Leeds, does construct a good piece of academic work on the subject. Her outlook does provide a good analysis of the societal/sociological "structure" of the RAMC, which is useful - especially gender relations up and down the RAMC structure.  Yes, it is an antidote to a group of largely white, older males who would seem to compose the greater number of members of this forum -the classic "male,pale and stale" of the younger-perhaps left of centre-academic view of us lot.  

   If I were to criticise on one level, it would that the article seeks to construct a one-size-fits-all structure to the RAMC and those who worked in it. But it does provide a useful basis and a viewpoint that should be taken into account in further reading.  Whether any stretcher bearer of the RAMC or infantry battalion would have been much influenced by the ideas of Michel Foucault is another matter...   It does provoke one of more persistent questions of History- Can later "ologies" ever faithfully reconstruct the mindset of those actually involved?

[FROGSMILE]

On 24/12/2020 at 06:23, Myrtle said:

It’s not accurate. It should have read France & Flanders. 
 

I’m not quite sure what you mean?

 

 

      Agreed- the author- a she, Jessica Mayer of the University of Leeds, does construct a good piece of academic work on the subject. Her outlook does provide a good analysis of the societal/sociological "structure" of the RAMC, which is useful - especially gender relations up and down the RAMC structure.  Yes, it is an antidote to a group of largely white, older males who would seem to compose the greater number of members of this forum -the classic "male,pale and stale" of the younger-perhaps left of centre-academic view of us lot.  

   If I were to criticise on one level, it would that the article seeks to construct a one-size-fits-all structure to the RAMC and those who worked in it. But it does provide a useful basis and a viewpoint that should be taken into account in further reading.  Whether any stretcher bearer of the RAMC or infantry battalion would have been much influenced by the ideas of Michel Foucault is another matter...   It does provoke one of more persistent questions of History- Can later "ologies" ever faithfully reconstruct the mindset of those actually involved?

Yes, I agree with what you (both) say; if one can get past the modern academic speak then I think its core information is very good.

[FROGSMILE]

   Although there were procedures laid down for both the RAMC chain and -separately-within the plans of infantry battalions, I suspect the reality was that wounded men were got to medical help  by any or all available means and such niceties as the pre-war manuals went out of the window. 

 

Indeed, although there’s no doubt that as a start point there was a very clear line of demarcation between the regimental stretcher bearers in the collection zone and the RAMC bearers in the evacuation zone.  The black and white photos that I posted show that very clearly.  The arm bands were surprisingly effective identifiers. 

[WhiteStarLine]

54 minutes ago, FROGSMILE said:

largely white, older males

And as one of that group I apologise unreservedly to Jessica Mayer for saying "he".  Luckily I praised her work and not the reverse!

[FROGSMILE]

On 24/12/2020 at 10:43, WhiteStarLine said:

And as one of that group I apologise unreservedly to Jessica Mayer for saying "he".  Luckily I praised her work and not the reverse!

Umm...you’re on a roll - I didn’t say that, Guest did!

[TEW]

I wasn't actually questioning the different stretcher bearer roles EG. battlefield to RAP by Regimental SB  or from RAP to the rear by the RAMC SB. I was questioning the statement that;

 

The RAMC were not used as stretcher bearers on the Western front. Cited as being Jessica Meyer.

 

An extract from Jessica Meyer's An Equal Burden says;

 

An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher-bearers and orderlies.

 

Another quote;

 

It was from RAPs that FA stretcher bearers collected wounded men.

 

Can't see why Jessica Meyer's would then state there were no RAMC stretcher bearers on the Western Front.

 

TEW

[Guest]

 POST DELETED. HAPPY CHRISTMAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 24 December , 2020 by Guest

[FROGSMILE]

30 minutes ago, TEW said:

I wasn't actually questioning the different stretcher bearer roles EG. battlefield to RAP by Regimental SB  or from RAP to the rear by the RAMC SB. I was questioning the statement that;

 

The RAMC were not used as stretcher bearers on the Western front. Cited as being Jessica Meyer.

 

An extract from Jessica Meyer's An Equal Burden says;

 

An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher-bearers and orderlies.

 

Another quote;

 

It was from RAPs that FA stretcher bearers collected wounded men.

 

Can't see why Jessica Meyer's would then state there were no RAMC stretcher bearers on the Western Front.

 

TEW

I did understand the key statement that you were debunking TEW.  The rest of what I posted was merely contextual.  The key point was that RAMC bearer sections were employed specifically as stretcher bearers and carried out that role by evacuating from the RAPs.  I was reinforcing your point.
Two of the photos I posted were actual RAPs, which by default were as far forward as possible in the prevailing circumstances at the time.  In both cases RAMC bearers are manifestly present and with stretchers to boot.

Edited 24 December , 2020 by FROGSMILE

[FROGSMILE]

    Coming back to the original theme does seem to raise some problems.  I would accept-gladly-that in organisational terms, the RAMC chain did not include getting men in off from No Mans Land and this was the prime responsibility of the troops involved- battalion bearers or what you will. I would suggest that RAMC personnel in or extremely close to the front line -and whatever their official titles were- probably did not use stretchers at all for much of the time.

   Take for example, probably the most reproduced photograph of stretcher bearers at work during the war-that taken by Lieutenant John Brooke at Pilckem Ridge in 1917:

 

 

       But hang on-does it represent reality- or,alternatively, a "reality" that the photographer wanted to propagate-or,indeed, any reality at all. The photograph is not front line,despite the mud. Given the killing range of German machine guns  no group of 7 men would be carrying a man on a stretcher like that. Nor have they been in the mud for any length of time as there appears to be none above their knees. Interesting to note that of the 7 stretcher bearers, only one (admittedly of the 4 whose right arms can be seen)  has a badge to identify him as a bearer-the man at the back:

 

 

I do not doubt for one moment the bravery of stretcher bearers through the Great War. But I would raise 3 points  in the discussion about their role which, I think, are over and above and army manual or battalion orders about who-formally-was supposed to do what.

 

 

1)   "All Hands to the Pump"

           I accept that the prime responsibility for getting wounded men back to medical treatment rested with their unit. Both as part of a formal structure-battalion orders and those plans so often found at the end of a month's diary in the battalion war diaries series that we pretty much all use and at a human level .  But it would be informal as well-  the orders,say, of 1st July 1916, to leave the wounded and keep going forward may have been brutal yet necessary but it goes against human nature- To expect that the same bonds   of "mateship" that were promoted to keep soldiers fighting together  would not kick in when a fellow man was wounded is a stretch that may not have worked most of the time. My reading of Somme memoirs and others suggests that orders to leave the wounded to others were deeply unpopular and,when obeyed, scarred the survivors for life.  

   Surviving photographs of the wounded being brought in rarely show stretcher bearers-regimental or RAMC- in action.  I post one that is obviously staged:

 

 

     It's the shiny helmet on the wounded man that doesn't work for me!!

I suspect that it was the job of a "stretcher bearer" -regimental or RAMC-to get a man in by whatever means- and that, probably/possibly stretchers were involved on a minority of occasions.  The most famous photograph of a wounded man from the war (For me, the greatest British image of the war) is the well-known photograph of a wounded man of the Queens being carried back-probably known to us all:

 

 

Interesting to note that ,according to Malins, this was a man being carried by someone of his own unit-Interesting also to note that this seems to be a reserve trench-and also that no attempt is being made by any of the other soldiers at the back of the photograph to aid the carrier (and that they are not front line infantry either- no "1st July" kit)

     What has surprised me when working down local casualties  is how many different odds-and-sods were involved in an infantry attack. Yes, it is good to note from map references in a war diary (or an "official" regimental or divisional history) that a battalion held such-and-such stretch of front line. Yes, it is interesting to note  the platoon and company formation orders attached to war diaries-a miniature world of administrative perfection and attention to detail.  But what of the others?  An infantry battalion would increasingly be supported by others-  squads or companies of the Machine Gun Corps, squads or companies of Trench Mortar teams, squads of Royal Engineers,  squads or attached companies of other battalions to work as ammunition or supplies carriers for the attacking battalion,etc,etc.  I would venture to suggest that in many photographs of wounded men being carried in, it is men of other units that are doing the carrying.  

 

 

2)  Use of  German prisoners.

      Its a puzzle to me that so many of the photographs of the war show German POWs carrying or assisting British wounded (as in the staged photograph above). Of course, the practical effect of this was that POWs were put to work-and were unlikely to be fired on by their fellows.  Yet several memoirs show that German POWs  more or less started carrying British wounded whether ordered to or not.  

 

    Was their any system to this?   Every set of battalion battle plans I have ever read has specific provisions for POWs to be taken to a holding area at the rear.  So their use as stretcher bearers was the responsibility of whom?   RAMC?  Provosts?  There are just far to many records of German POWs doing stretcher bearer work (and carrying or assisting) for it not to have been formally structured somewhere-far to frequent for "nod and a wink"  (Interesting also that I cannot recollect any picture of British POWs carrying German wounded on the other side of the line)

 

 

3)  MOST MEN WERE NOT STRETCHERED BY ANYONE AT ANYTIME

    I venture to suggest that stretcher bearers -regimental or RAMC- used stretchers very little of the time in the front line. Far too dangerous.  I  would suggest that the majority of photographs of wounded Brits. are of walking wounded-while those pictures of wounded men being carried on stretchers seem to be away from the immediate front line.  Despite the gallant record of the RAMC and of those numerous officers and men properly rewarded with MM,MCs,etc for acts of gallantry in getting in wounded, it remains a sad speculation that a sizeable number-perhaps the majority- of non-walking wounded were pulled,shoved,manhandled,etc and that the formalities of "stretcher bearers" had nothing to do with them getting to British lines and treatment.

    One of the more distressing elements of the war is the number of wounded men who died in No Mans Land.  eg I have a local casualty, John Raymond Vautier of the 13th Essex-very badly wounded on the Somme as a Sergeant and dragged himself in from No Mans Land over 3 days (Only to die of pneumonia while in a British war hospital while in England).  Several Somme memoirs  have the bitter memories of survivors in latter years recalling the cries of the wounded in No Mans Land that when on for days or weeks after 1st July 1916. We have the moving testimony of John Duesbery of  the 2nd Sherwood Foresters from later on the Somme-that no-one had come to help him nor had he seen anyone at all for 24 hours after he was wounded.

   In our times we have the concept of the "Golden Hour" for those who are injured-that few injuries are fatal if attended to quickly. That-perhaps-is the great tragedy of the Great War for the likes of John  Duesbery and others. They simply died of treatable wounds in No Mans Land because no aid could be got to them.  Time after time after time, the POW enquiry cards at ICRC  have the words "blesse" and "disparu"-  that a man was missing but only known to be wounded when last seen,rather than dead. OK, many wounds were fatal and the enquiries to ICRC were a triumph of false hope over reality.  BUT I suggest that-with our modern concept of a "Golden Hour" , the greatest tragedy of the war was that systems of retrieving the wounded simply only worked in-perhaps-a minority of cases. That, brutally, the majority of the wounded got themselves in or simply bled to death in No Mans Land.

 

PS- Interesting to note that  that RAMC memorial at the National Arboretum shows a wounded man being brought in- though not a stretcher in sight.

 

 

 

I’m not quite sure what parallel universe you occupy if you think there were no stretchers ever used in the front line and that photos of them must all be posed.

[FROGSMILE]

Please note the words "For much of the time" in the extract you quote.  But I do look forward  to seeing photographs that are indisputably "front line"-that is, British first line trench or NML.  Because I have not seen any.

They would hardly have been equipped with selfie sticks so your comment is disingenuous.  I was not suggesting that stretchers were always used to carry casualties down trenches and their traverses.  It is equally preposterous to suggest that they were never used.  There are certainly documented accounts mentioning the use of stretchers in the front line in various publications that I’ve read in the past.

[FROGSMILE]

I have not.  eg  Point 3,first line: " I venture to suggest that stretcher bearers -regimental or RAMC- used stretchers very little of the time in the front line. Far too dangerous"

       BUT I suspect that in the actual front line-as opposed to anywhere back from it- the term "stretcher bearer" may,de facto, have meant a man-regimental or RAMC- who was charged with retrieving the wounded. I suggest that a stretcher may have been the ideal but the practicality was that a stretcher bearer's job was to retrieve the wounded by any means possible. 

That is not how it came across.  Using stretchers “very little of the time” (extremely specific), flies in the face of the numerous images of stretchers forward, as in the two contemporary B&W photographs of RAPs that I posted above.