The Charlotte Evac

The term evacuation hospital may have a sound unpleasantly antiseptic to civilians. To the badly wounded soldier it sounds like the difference between life and death. For the "evac" hospital is the nearest place to gunfire where a wounded man can get more than emergency treatment. Until he gets there, a soldier keeps his boots on.

Waiting last week on the African mainland to put the sick and wounded from Sicily to bed was the Charlotte, N.C., Evacuation Hospital, an all-tent, mobile affair, with over 1,000 cots and a big staff of doctors, nurses and enlisted men. Correspondent Ernie Pyle has told how this evac took in patients twelve hours after the U.S. landing near Algiers last November.

It's Different. With over 9,000 patients and only 19 deaths behind it, the Charlotte Evac now has the honor of handling casualties from Sicily and routing them to other evacs or to station hospitals in the rear. Most such medical units are volunteer doctor groups backed by rich, big-city hospitals. This evac is different: its medical staff is composed of young doctors from Charlotte, N.C., and a sprinkling of other doctors, mainly Southerners. As Charlotte has no rich hospital, initial support for the unit came from the proceeds of a local show and from contributions around town.

The idea got started when blunt, handsome, 38-year-old Surgeon Paul Sanger confided to General Marshall at a cocktail party in 1940 that the Charlotte doctors wanted to form an Army unit. The unit was authorized in December, went on active duty at Fort Bragg in March 1942, left for England Aug. 6, scrambled ashore in Africa Nov. 7 and was fully set up about ten miles from Oran a few days later. At Oran, the unit handled 2,027 patients.

Deafening Chorus. Besides Surgeon Sanger, now a lieutenant colonel, there is medium-sized, thin Lieut. Colonel Thomas Preston White, who heads the medical staff, Lieut. Colonel George T. Wood, executive officer, Dentist Vaiden Kendrick, Charlotte's ace toothpuller (there was a rush of dental procrastinators to his chair when he announced he was leaving Charlotte). Charlotte also contributed several other doctors, two business managers--Captain Stanton Pickens, who used to work for the Coca-Cola Co. and "Buck" Medearis, manager of a laundry--and many of the nurses. Once when the Evac was stuck on a siding waiting to move nearer the front, the engineer of a train going the other way called: "Anyone from Charlotte, N.C.?" The answering chorus nearly knocked him out of his cab.

Though not from Charlotte, the commanding officer is one of the Evac's favorite characters: he is a non-medical Army man, Colonel Rollin L. Bauchpies of Mauch Chunk, Pa., who calls the hospital's venereal disease section "Casanova." The enlisted men of the unit are mostly New Englanders. They come in for a lot of Mason-Dixon Line ribbing.

During the Mateur and Bizerte battles the Charlotte Evac was just behind the lines. The unit got so good at moving that in the final North African push it discharged patients in Beja and received some in Tunis (some 55 miles apart) on the same day.

Blood and Running Water. Compared with those dynamic days, the tent hospital on its broad hill with gravel driveways now has a settled look. Italian prisoners have installed running water and some of the other comforts of home. The pharmacy hands out prescriptions and runs a blood bank (plasma is not enough for some cases with great blood loss, and the Evac stores whole blood bled from its own personnel). The shock tents give transfusions, prepare men for operations; the operating tent can handle 16 cases an hour around the clock. The dentistry tent with three chairs was for a long time the only place in North Africa where U.S. servicemen could get false teeth.

As usual in war, there is much improvised equipment: sterilizers made from potato cans, shower baths made from gasoline drums, hinges from shell cases, an icebox from a Coca-Cola vending machine, can openers from any old thing (though 90% of field rations come in cans, the hospital set out without a single can opener). The Evac's most elaborate contrivance is a "Hawley table," a device for holding a man's body suspended for the application of big casts, which some men from the Air Corps Ordnance Department made from spare parts.

Impartial Treatment. Sicilian casualties (both Allied and Axis) are picked up by the U.S. Army Medical Corps in Sicily, get first aid, are then flown over the water in an air ambulance to a field near the Evac. A ground ambulance picks them up and deposits them at the hospital's receiving tent. There a casualty is treated much like a patient entering a ward at home. His field medical record is begun with entries describing his wound and how he got it--these entries are copied from the tag attached to his coverall. The record, stamped with the man's "dog tag" and put in an envelope, goes with the patient until his hospital discharge, even if he goes to the U.S. to convalesce.

Patients are assigned to wards according to their injuries: there are orthopedic wards, head and spine wards, malaria, abdominal wound and dysentery wards. At his ward a patient is undressed, put in pajamas. His clothes, except for his shoes, helmet and gas mask, are stored away in a labeled bag. After that, he is X-rayed to find whatever metal he is carrying inside him, or the extent of his hurt. Then he is given what dressings and surgery he needs. As soon as a patient's condition warrants moving, he is sent to a hospital farther to the rear.

The Charlotte Evac is a desperately efficient place these days, but its person nel still finds time for a little fun. Right now on the ground outside the surgical tent are two neat patches outlined in white pebbles and decorated with a heart-&-arrows design that says: "Lieut. Ferry man, Miss Guyett, Ward 28."

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