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Both these first steps in more perfect organization of ambulance aid have since then been carried to a far more definite development, and practically the clear lines of the German military medical system is now followed in all modern armies. This system may be sunimed up briefly as one freeing the front of the army from all sick and wounded, and evacuating all seriously sick to the great hospitals on the lines of communication, or at the base of operations.

The system can be more easily gripped by studying

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REGIMENTAL AMBULANCE AID AT WORK-CAVALRY HELP TO WOUNDED. (After Ruhlemann.)

the diagram of the ambulance arrangements of an English. Army Corps which forms a frontispiece to this handbook.

An English Army Corps is the highest unit of military organization we have in the English military system, and any great army would consist of several Army Corps grouped together. If then we understand the arrangement of a single Army Corps, we can easily follow the larger arrangements.

The total strength of an English Army Corps is about 36,000 men, with ninety pieces of artillery. This body is commanded by a general, and is medically administered by a surgeon-general on his staff.

The Army Corps is divided for command into three

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military divisions of all arms, one detached and separate cavalry brigade, and a body of reserve artillery and engineers called the corps troops.

Each division is again subdivided into twelve military units grouped in brigades and divisional battalions or batteries. The cavalry brigade has three regiments of cavalry and a battery of horse artillery, and the corps troops consist of five batteries of artillery (thirty guns) and four field units of engineers.

With each of these units, be it battalion, regiment or battery, on mobilisation for war, a medical officer is placed. He is the sanitary supervisor of the unit, and is a staff officer of the commander of the unit, and he remains with the unit throughout the campaign.

He has a certain amount of portable drugs and dressings supplied to him, and carried in "Field Companions," and he is supposed to treat any trivial cases of illness of a few days' duration; but no regimental hospital properly so called now exists in our own or any European army.

All seriously sick or wounded are now treated in divisional hospitals, of which more presently.

For ambulance aid this battalion medical officer has placed under his command two soldiers per company equipped with stretchers and surgical haversacs. These men have taken the place of the old scratch system of employing bandsmen, and they give aid to the regimental wounded under fire, and are called the regimental stretcher or ambulance detachment. They are in no way to be confounded with the "Divisional Bearer Companies."

When the regimental medical officer has given what rough help he can to the wounded under fire he sends them to the rear by his regimental bearers, and here a new organization, constituting an entirely new departure in our army, is met with this is the Divisional Bearer Company. With each of the three divisions of an Army Corps is posted a Bearer Company completely non-regimental, and being really a divisional medical unit serving under the general and principal medical officer of the division. Half of such

a company is attached to the cavalry brigade and half to the corps troops. This makes a total of four such companies in an army corps.

Each company consists of eight surgeons and some two hundred and six Army Hospital Corps stretcher-bearers and transport drivers. These stretcher-bearers are trained in ambulance drill and first aid to the wounded, and in the

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formation of dressing stations. Each company has two surgery waggons, water carts, and thirty-three ambulance transport waggons.

The surgery waggons are fitted up with boxes and baskets containing surgical dressings and instruments, cooking utensils, and medical comforts for the wounded. Each waggon has also an operating table and tent for surgical service at the dressing station.

These companies move directly in the rear of the fighting line, and having pitched the operating tent and dressing station, and left a suitable staff to assist there, they send forward the waggons to a "collecting station" further ahead, and just on the verge of the musketry fire. From this they again send forward the stretcher-bearers, who go on to the actual battlefield and collect and give a first dressing to the wounded, stop bleeding, give water and stimulants, and carry back the wounded to the collecting station and transfer them to the ambulance waggons. The

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DETACHMENTS OF THE BEARER COMPANY AT WORK.

(After Starcke and Ruhlemann.)

regimental stretcher-bearers likewise co-operate, either loading their wounded directly into the ambulance waggons or handing them over to the bearer company staff on the field. The transport waggons then carry the wounded to the dressing station properly so called, where a completer examination is made of the wounded, where regular food is given, and where a classification of the cases can be made. From this place the wounded are sent back to the field hospitals of the division further in the rear, or if these hospitals are delayed in reaching the rear of the army, as

they often are, the bearer company dressing station becomes for the time a very advanced field hospital, where the wounded can receive a rough attendance pending the arrival of the hospitals upon the field.

We now come to the field hospitals. These units have replaced the forty-nine little hospitals which in olden days would have marched in the front line of an army in the field. Every English Army Corps has twenty-five field hospitals, each supposed to accommodate and nurse 200 sick and wounded. Of these twenty-five hospitals two are attached to each division, making a total of six, and six more are in reserve behind the fighting front of the army and ready to replace the divisional field hospitals when the latter become full of sick and are no longer in a position to advance with the force. Thirteen field hospitals are placed along the communication line at the various étappes or halting stations of the army, and at the base of operations three or more of these are grouped to form a base hospital, one of the most essential institutions with an army in war time.

A soldier if hit in the front of the army is roughly dressed by the battalion doctor, he is then taken to the divisional dressing station and completely examined and fed, thence he passes to the divisional field hospital, where if he be trivially hurt he remains, recovers, and rejoins his battalion, but if seriously sick or injured is sent back by the lines of communication towards or to the base hospital. Here if he recovers he again is sent forward and rejoins his corps, but if completely injured and broken down, he is placed in the hospital ships, and in due course arrives at Netley and England.

The medical service of the army consists of three bodies, viz., the Army Medical Staff, composed of physicians and surgeons commissioned in the army. These officers are responsible for the working of the medical and sanitary service of the army, command the medical corps, and are governed by a Director General who belongs to the War Office Staff. There is also a Medical Corps of some 2200 hospital attendants trained to nursing and ambulance

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