This book is a detailed diary of the 95th Evacuation Hospital of the United
States Army, from April 1943 through May 1945, as it moved through North
Africa, Italy, France, and Germany. Zachary B. Friedenberg wrote the text on
the basis of his personal experiences and remembrances plus the diaries of
several physicians, nurses, and enlisted men from the hospital. Following the
war, Dr. Friedenberg finished his residency and became a professor of
orthopaedic surgery at the University of Pennsylvania.
The 95th Evacuation Hospital was a mobile combat support unit of 400 beds.
It functioned in close support of a division, corps, or even an army and
received both medical and surgical patients directly from the battalion aid
stations. No reconstructive surgery or rehabilitation was done. The
administrative officers and enlisted men made the hospital completely
self-supporting and mobile, with its own trucks, generators, laundry, and
other supplies. It took fifty-three trucks and twenty-four trailers to move
the hospital. The enlisted men were proficient in loading or unloading
equipment and setting up the hospital in approximately five to six hours after
arrival at a new site of operation.
The professional personnel of the hospital included thirty physicians and
forty nurses. The surgical staff was divided into surgical teams, each
consisting of a senior surgeon, an assistant surgeon, an anesthetist, and a
ward officer. The teams were headed by abdominal, thoracic, and orthopaedic
surgeons. The ward officer tracked the patient from before to after surgery.
The nursing staff consisted of two chief nurses and thirty-eight other nurses,
some of whom worked in the operating room, either giving anesthesia or
assisting at the operating tables. Other nurses maintained the sterile
instrument table. There were also technical sergeants in radiology and in the
blood laboratory, in addition to those assisting in the operating room. When
there was a heavy flow of casualties, outside specialist teams were
temporarily assigned. Usually these consisted of neurosurgeons.
The nurses were an inspiration to patients and to other members of the
hospital. The surroundings were unusual, since the 95th Evacuation Hospital
was the first Allied hospital to penetrate Nazi-occupied Europe. When the
patient load would allow, the nurses would visit the surrounding communities
to buy fruit, flowers, or even ice cream, to ride the trolley, or to purchase
a ticket to the local opera.
In contrast, some of the nurses' experiences were near disasters. On the
ninth of September, 1943, during the invasion of the Bay of Salerno, the
nurses were moved to the British ship Newfoundland for a later
landing. On the fourteenth of September, the Newfoundland was bombed.
There were no American deaths, but the British lost seven nurses, five
doctors, and six enlisted men. Four patients were killed and ten were wounded.
On the seventh of February, 1944, near Anzio, the 75th Evacuation Hospital was
bombed by a German bomber plane. Twenty-two hospital staff were killed,
including three nurses and sixteen enlisted men. Four patients were killed and
ten were wounded.
With the cessation of hostilities in Europe in May 1945, the members of the
hospital were able to witness the mass movement of refugees returning home.
The refugees had no information regarding their homes or families. A detail of
nurses was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. They described men, women,
and children in the final stages of starvation, covered with sores over which
crawled lice and fleas; many were infected with typhus and tuberculosis. The
horrors of the crematorium and gas chamber were also described, as were the
boxcars of bodies waiting to be disposed of.
During the two years that the 95th Evacuation Hospital was in a combat
theater, it functioned in approximately twenty sites, from Oujda in Africa to
Ebermagen (Ebermergen) in Germany. A total of 41,663 patients were admitted,
including combat troops, civilian casualties, and prisoners of war. Of these
patients, 21,046 had been wounded in action, and 20,617 were admitted for
medical problems. Mortality for all admissions was 0.95%. In North Africa and
Italy, malaria was the most frequent medical diagnosis. Respiratory infections
became more severe as the action moved north to France and Germany. There was
no effective way to save a limb in which the arterial supply had been torn by
a shell fragment; this was particularly true with regard to the popliteal
artery at the knee.
The 95th Evacuation Hospital received a Meritorious Unit Commendation for
superior performance of duty for the period from the fifteenth of August,
1943, to the twentieth of December, 1944.