From the Roer to the Elbe With the 1st Medical Group: Medical Support of the Deliberate River Crossing

Casualties are an inevitable consequence of battle, and they are commonly listed at the end of historical accounts as figures for dead and wounded. The assumption, on reading these numbers, is that the dead were al some point, during or after the battle, collected and the wounded treated. Rarely do battle analysts devote more than passing attention to the medical support provided these combatants.

Captain Donald E. Hall, in his special study on the 1st Medical Group in World War II, reminds us that procedures for treating the wounded have evolved considerably since those days when death or amputation seemed the foregone alternatives for a serious wound to an appendage. By World War II, medical support provided by the U.S. Army in combat had modified extensively and employed multiple echelons of health care. Advances in medicine, medical science, and medical treatment also had improved the care of soldiers wounded under the dangerous and unpredictble conditions of the modern battlefield.

Captain Hall describes for us the difficulties confronted in river-crossing operations, where the removal and flow of casualties runs counter to the general flow of traffic to the front. Hall's study is timely and properly emphasizes the necessity for including medical support in meaningful battle analyses.