Combat Medics

In World War II, medics were the front line of battlefield medicine. A battalion of some 400 to 500 men typically had about thirty medics or aidmen, though attrition later in the campaign often reduced that number. Their work was not to provide extensive treatment to the wounded, but to stabilize them and prepare them for evacuation to field hospitals or medical centers to the rear. They were trained to stop bleeding, apply dressings, sprinkle sulfa powder on wounds as an antiseptic, and administer morphine as a sedative, while more elaborate treatment had to wait. They sometimes had to decide which wounded soldiers were beyond help and move on to the next man. Some were chosen for medical expertise, while others were conscientious objectors assigned to this duty instead of a combat role. On June 6, 1944, dozens went into battle, usually without a weapon. The red cross on their helmets was intended to protect them, and Germans usually respected that convention, but shell fire and shrapnel still made the work dangerous. On D-Day, especially on Omaha Beach, evacuating wounded soldiers was nearly impossible because the number of wounded exceeded expectations and the means to evacuate them did not exist. Landing craft unloading invasion personnel had no time and no orders to carry the wounded back to the fleet, so although some helped with evacuation, most wounded on the beaches had to be brought forward to cover or left where they had fallen. In the Normandy Invasion, the wounded were moved forward into fire rather than back away from the fighting. Medical teams on D-Day faced many other challenges as well: those dropped behind Utah Beach with airborne and glider forces often lost their medical supplies, while sea-borne forces, especially at Omaha Beach, found themselves in the wrong places, with little equipment and nowhere to establish aid stations. Even so, the medics of Operation Overlord improvised ways to treat as many wounded as they could at great personal risk. After the war, veterans often remembered medics as the bravest men they had known, and six US Army medics received the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in France and Germany in 1944-1945, three of them posthumously.

Bedford, Virginia · United States