Throughout the Korean War, doctors and nurses performed vital and heroic work to save lives on hospital ships, in airborne medical evacuations, and with frontline Mobile Army Surgical Hospital units, where days were long and the stream of patients seemed endless. Captain Lillian Kinkella Keil of Covina, California, one of only 30 nurses stationed in Asia when the war began, became one of the most highly decorated women in U.S. military history after taking part in 175 air evacuations of the wounded and tending more than 10,000 wounded military personnel across her World War II and Korean War service. Dr. Dexter Ball of Santa Ana, California, serving with the 8209 MASH unit, recalled that his unit constantly moved with the troops, sometimes as many as twelve times each year, and at times performed surgeries on up to 1,000 casualties a day, while 95 percent of their patients left the unit alive. Innovations developed in the field during the war, including helicopter evacuation, paramedics, and advanced methods for treating shock, later entered civilian life in the decades that followed.