NEWSWEEK March 27, 1944
Army Hospital On Wheels

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Hospital on Wheels:  
Army Sees to It That Wounded Go Home in Comfort

Over Mariners Harbor on Staten Island the March sky was bleak.  As the stretcher bearers tilted the Army litter down the steep stairs at Halloran General Hospital, the yellow-haired corporal humped his bandaged arm under the Army blanket and frowned.  Less that 24 hours before, a hospital ship had brought him home from a foreign port that reeked of shattered jasmine flowers and stale gunpowder.  A night in a soft American bed at Halloran, a careful check on the stubborn shoulder wound which since Salerno had refused to heal - and the corporal was off on another trip, this time by Army ambulance.  With his one good arm, he covered his eyes against the light.

WARD:  Twenty minutes later, his litter was hoisted through the wide steel door of a long, green train marked with a Red Cross on white, part of more than a dozen cars backed up at Arlington Yards.  His new bed was a business-like metal bunk; his blanket the familiar olive drab.  "You are now a patient on one of the Second Service Command hospital trains," he read from the set of multigraphed orders handed him before the train started.  "This is a hospital on wheels."  The corporal lifted his head and stared down the aisle.

What he say was the interior of a very GI Army ward hospital car - one of the fourteen-car outfit which last week made up the 112th Army train movement to distribute wounded and sick fighting men from the East Coast evacuation hospital to some of the 50 large general hospitals scattered around the United States.  Making the trip as the Army's guests were newsweek reporters and Marguerite Clark of Newsweek.

Compartment, seats, and thick green plush had been ripped fro the former deluxe club car.  Metal springs held up regular Army mattresses; strong leather straps replaced the green curtains in front of 32 bunks arranged in upper and lower tiers.  Air conditioning helped to remove the odor of iodoform and Lysol.

"Which side is it, soldier ?" was the first thing asked the patient.  That was so the medical corpsman could place him with his wounded shoulder on the aisle side to make it handier when the doctors made their rounds.  "What's your trouble ?" came next, although that was only a conversation maker.  Tied to each patient's pajama jacket was a tag (surgical in the corporal's case) showing his name, serial number, diagnosis, and required treatment.  When the corporal asked for a drink, the white-garbed Army nurse rested it in a stationary glass holder.  An individual tray caught his cigarette ashes.

The only thing the corporal didn't know about himself - and wasn't encouraged to discuss - was his destination.  The Army understands that wounded soldiers may grow nervous when evacuated; they may dread new scenes, new faces.  Transfer by rail is made as soon as possible after his return as the man's condition permits.  Halloran General must be cleared quickly to make way for new cases from overseas; the Army wants to ge the men as near home as possible.  On this trip Southern soldiers were sent to Walter Reed General Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., and Northington General Hospital in Tuscaloose, Ala., while the Midwesterners traveled on to Billings General Hospital in Indianapolis, Wakeman General Hospital at Camp Atterbury, Ind., and Percy Jones General near Battle Creek, Mich.

TALKING WOUNDED:  The top turret gunner of a Flying Fortress, once a shipping clerk in Allentown, Pa., was still too bewildered at being back in America to question his destination.  One of a crew of five saved by a high-power launch of the British Sea-Air Rescue Command when his big bomber crashed in the North Sea, the gunner had watched the other crew members disappear in the choppy waters.  As the train rolled on, he spoke repeatedly of the lost crew.  "Seeing them go was the worst part of the war," he said.  "There are a lot of good-byes in the Army."

Nor could the Southern sergeant in the bunk below settle down to the fact that after nineteen months of overseas service he was home.  He was a veteran of the North African campaign - "a wild First Divisioner," he wanted everyone to know - that he was "still in the fight."  "I've got to get back as soon as my spine heals," he said.  "You know about General Terry Allen ? There's a man for you."

The train moved southward at an easy 45 miles an hour.  Some of the boys napped quietly; others peered curiously at the slipping landscape.  A round-faced infantryman said he had fallen from a landing net - and lived to tell the story.  "It's a tall one - but you'll have to wait until after the war," he grinned.  The leg case next to him knew that an infected bone meant a medical discharge eventually.  The Negro soldier with the shortened leg didn't want to talk.  Keeping his eyes open seemed an effort.

Malaria had turned a little saucer-eyed Southerner a sickly yellow and ebbed 42 pounds from his frail frame.  "I had the fever through three campaigns - Oran, Tunsia and Sicily," he piped, "but I didn't give up.  Atabrine kept me going, but it sure made me punkin-colored."

While the others tackled their big American meal of fried chicken, peas, mashed potatoes, and ice cream, one hollow-checked soldier gulped a milk-and-egg concoction with the old Army crack: "I've got to be good to this stomach ulcer.......it brought me home."  The meal served to the litter cases on Army mess kits and to the walking patients in the regular Pullman dining car, came from the spic-and-span Pullman kitchen car, manned by a big Negro Chef.

Beyond the kitchen was a ward car with a white surgical room with instrument cabinet, operating table, and sterilizer, equipped for anything from a laceration to an emergency operation.  Next to it was a little office where the patients' records and medical supplies, which included a great many jars of blood plasma, were kept.  One car baggage room to piles of overseas kits and helmets, crutches, and bedrolls.  And two Pullman cars made barracks on wheels for the four Army nurses, five officers (four medical and one administrator), and fifteen medical corpsmen that made up the train's staff.

WALKING WOUNDED: For the walking patients, two ward hospital cars had been turned into comfortable lounges by removing the upper row of bunks.  Some of the wounded were slicked up in well-pressed uniforms; others wore their red corduroy bathrobes.  All seemed a little restless at being cooped up.  An attractive Red Cross girl made the rounds with cigarettes, magazines, and candy bars.  Cards were brought out but the men didn't seem to want to play.  Most of the soldiers just stared out of the windows.

"There's the Schuylkill River...Fairmount Park," muttered a dark boy with his right arm in a sling.  "Philadelphia your home ?" the Red Cross girl asked.  But 22 months in North Africa and Italy were too much for him.  "It used to be," he choked.

The Army nurse knew what to do about that.  She lit a cigarette for the man who couldn't use his right arm.

NURSE:  Serene, blue-eyed Second Lt. Alice Hall of West Pittston, Pa., chief of the train nurses, went out with the first evacuation of overseas patients from Halloran General Hospital on January 1, 1943.  Lt,. Hall has often traveled across the country with special cars of psychoneurotic patients, with car windows wired and military police on guard.

On the hospital train night fell quickly.  Lights were out at 9:20 and only the little floor lights shone through the dim, swaying cars.  Before Capt. Emanuel Edman, the train commander, began his final rounds, some of the litter cases had dropped off to sleep.  Others were straining to hear the sound of his kindly: "How are you feeling, soldier ?"  The complaints were few, and those in a half-shamed whisper: 
That slug spot in my arm hurts, sir."  "Guess I've got bronchitis again."  "I can't seem to sleep."

Edman, a general practitioner in Sag Harbor, Long Island, before the war, and a veteran of some 50 hospital-train trips, trained his stethoscope on the hoarse-voiced soldier.  He lifted the bandaged leg of one, ordered a sedative for another.  "Thanks, sir," they murmured.

END OF THE RUN:  In the next car the walking cases had been told they were nearing their destination.  They sat on the edge of their bunks.  They worried about their baggage; they wondered audibly where they were going.  "The nurse said ten minutes." announced a lanky Virginia sergeant.  His overseas cap was set straight.  His eyes were bright with excitement.  "Bet you it's Walter Reed," he said.  "You're dreaming," drawled another soldier from the same state.  "That's too near home."  "Five dollars says so," said the sergeant.

At Silver Spring, Md., the hospital train stopped beside two rows of Army ambulances.  The medical corpsmen slid the sleepy wounded out of their bunks and carried the litters through the wide doors.  The walking cases hobbled across the platform.  "What'd I tell you ?" whooped the Virginia Sergeant as the ambulance pulled out toward Washington.  the bet was his.  For this group of soldiers, the destination was Walter Reed.