Stretcher Bearers

[docchippy]

Morning all

We all know RAMC and the acronym it supposed to represent (Rob all my comrades etc.) However what was the rule regarding abandoning the ordinary equipment (webbing, pack, rifle bayonet etc) of wounded men, before carrying them away from the battle area? I ask as even know a common find on battlefield are helmets, bayonets, buckles and other equip. Photos of stretcher bearers always appear to be carrying me sans equipment. Would these be more likley to have been abandoned by casualty evacuation, or other?

Doc

[Rob B]

Doc,

I would always say it is easy to replace weapons and equipment but not men and the biggest killer of moral is a wounded comrade who has not been recovered.

So any thing that hampers a wounded soldier being recovered must be ditched. If you can take any thing a weapon, ammunition and then G1198 items ie: compass Binos would be the priority etc.

Rob

[Bob Coulson]

The ditched gear would be picked up by patrols later when conditions allowed, quite a few references to this in war diaries.

Bob.

[docchippy]

Thnkas for clarification

Doc

[squirrel]

I read somewhere, can't remember where of course, that in action a soldier was not to remove his equipment unless ordered to do so by an Officer, but could remove his equipment if wounded and able to do so.

[DrB]

Geneva Conventions (?) forbade the removal of anything but the wounded from a field of conflict. This was originally written to protect stretcher bearers from being on the receiving end of enemy fire. (Ha, ha!)

Nor were they to move gear, especially small arms ammo on stretchers, although I have read accounts of the Germans doing this, and likely, the allies did it as well. if they could "get away with it."

If observed carrying ammo. et. al., in lieu of a warm body, they were subject to being fired upon. I.e...."fair game."

DrB

[Doc2]

Geneva Conventions (?) forbade the removal of anything but the wounded from a field of conflict. This was originally written to protect stretcher bearers from being on the receiving end of enemy fire. (Ha, ha!)

Nor were they to move gear, especially small arms ammo on stretchers, although I have read accounts of the Germans doing this, and likely, the allies did it as well. if they could "get away with it."

If observed carrying ammo. et. al., in lieu of a warm body, they were subject to being fired upon. I.e...."fair game."

DrB

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Dr B, I'd have to see a quotation from the conventions on this issue. I have read them in great detail, and find no such prohibition. The only prohibition in this regard is that to benefit from the protection (such as it is) of the Conventions, they must "carry out no activities harmful to the enemy", which was interpreted as attacking or shooting in self-defense. In fact, the Conventions specifically protected medical installatiions from charges of having violated the Conventions simply due to the presence of arms and ammunition removed from the wounded. It would be prohibited for litter bearers to be used to police up usable equipment from the battlefield specifically, but if such equipment were brought off with casualties, I don't think anyone would claim this was a violation of the Conventions. A more likely explanatiion is simply that weapons and equipment are HEAVY. If you have ever carried a stretcher, especially under fire and over rough terrain, you would understand the desire to carry as little weight as possible. I think this is simply a practical matter-- Litter-bearers normally dumped equipment from the casualties simply to avoid carrying it. Doc2

[DrB]

Dcc2...I cannot give you the exact quote but only relate what I was told at the Combat Casuality Care Course at an army fort? in San Antoniao Texas in 1983.

It was a tri-service staffed and sponsored thing. (But I don't know if the goats were Navy or not.)

M-16's were recovered in Nam because the Marine Corps is a trifle stingy about issuing new equipment instead of salvaging old stuff.

Perhaps what you mentioned is a rewrite or newer info, or indeed, maybe I was told the staff's intrepretation of the the old conventions.

We were allowed to carry weapons with us in combat, but they were not to be used offensively. but only in personal defense of ourselves or the casuality we were treating.

DrB

[Doc2]

Dcc2...I cannot give you the exact quote but only relate what I was told at the Combat Casuality Care Course at an army fort? in San Antoniao Texas in 1983.

It was a tri-service staffed and sponsored thing. (But I don't know if the goats were Navy or not.)

M-16's were recovered in Nam because the Marine Corps is a trifle stingy about issuing new equipment instead of salvaging old stuff.

Perhaps what you mentioned is a rewrite or newer info, or indeed, maybe I was told the staff's intrepretation of the the old conventions.

We were allowed to carry weapons with us in combat, but they were not to be used offensively. but only in personal defense of ourselves or the casuality we were treating.

DrB

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ah, the good old C4 course! I helped set that up many years ago, in an earlier life...... Did you do yours at Ft. Sam Houston, or at Camp Bullis? In any case, the information they gave you in this regard was wrong, at least as it purports to be mandated by the Geneva Conventions, and certainly as it applied to WWI (it may have been US Tri-Service policy at that time, though I never was taught that rule, but it doesn't directly come from the conventions). First, they would have been giving you information regarding their interpretation of the 1949 Conventions (in effect in 1983), not those in effect during the First World War. Second, even the 1949 Conventions don't really say what you were told. In fact, Article 22 of the 1st Geneva Convention (1949) specifically states that medical units and organisations do not lose their Convention protection due to the prescence of weapons and equipment from the wounded which "has not yet been turned in to the appropriate authorities". I suspect that what you were taught was some policy adopted for unknown reasons, but which was not specifically required by the Geneva Conventions.

I do not have available any contemporaneous documentation, but I continue to believe that the fact that the average litter bearer does not carry off weapons and equipment with the casualty is simply practical, not legal. Doc2

[jhill]

Salvage was an important activity throughout the war, and units were constantly admonished to pay more attention to it. I have seen orders in which it was laid down that every man was, on relief, to bring back one item of salvage from the line. There were salvage organizations at the divisional or corps level which coordinated this. The infantry battalions were generally called on to provide carrying parties. To get a idea of the mind-boggling quantities and varieties of stuff salvaged you might want to browse through the appendices to the Canadian Corps Salvage Company War Diaries .

I have seen no references to stretcher parties bringing stuff back with the wounded, although of course items like steel helmets and respirators were not to be removed from the casualties. However, remember that for every stretcher case there were two or three walking wounded. Operational orders sometimes explicitly mentioned that it was expected that wounded men would make every effort to bring their equipment back with them. In the November 6, 1917 operation at Passchendaele, for example, one dump was located for this purpose at Frost House, which was four or five miles back of the point of the advance. Wounded were expected to bring their kit on foot over a dodgy duckboard trail in the midst of a battle. No "coddling" there!

[stevenbecker]

Mate,

You find many soldiers had already stripped them selves of there equiptment after being hit and you never waste time and effort carrying it.

If the wound is an upper or middle body wound then you find or you can remove the basic webbing to bandage the wound both front and back if its gone threw, but lower body wounds you can remove or not the webbing because he may need it to still fight.

As to carrying his personal weapon you are left with the same problem if he doesn't need it any longer by his wound then leave it but if he is still able to fight let him keep it as it may came in handy while carrying him.

Cheers

S.B

[truthergw]

A topic which crops up time and again in descriptions of battles is the nightmare of retrieving the wounded. The broken ground and remaining wire in no man's land then the narrow twisting trenches. The notion that anything which could be dumped but wasn't seems very unlikely.