The 56th Evac Hospital: Letters of a WWII Army Doctor (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The 56th Evac Hospital: Letters of a WWII Army Doctor Robert J. T. Joy Lawrence D. Collins. The 56th Evac Hospital: Letters of a WWII Army Doctor. War and the Southwest Series, no. 4. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1995. xx + 284 pp. Ill. $29.95. The fiftieth anniversary of World War II brought forth the useful memoirs of veterans. Lawrence Collins had been a pharmacist for several years before going to medical school, and had just completed his medical residency at Baylor in 1942 when the Baylor Unit was called to war. The university-based hospital units arose from an idea of George Crile’s in World War I, in which they served as base hospitals. Between the wars certain of these units were maintained and brought on active duty with physicians, nurses, and other personnel. The advantage was a team that knew each other—but this could also be a problem. First Lieutenant Collins, thirty-six years old, began his story in April 1943 as the unit moved overseas to North Africa, where they arrived in May. The book is composed entirely of excerpts from his letters to his wife (with an occasional one to a relative). He wrote nearly every day and has added almost no editorial comments. His constant themes are those of all servicemen abroad in war: the arrival of mail, the food, homesickness, mud, rain, his superiors and unit politics, the concern with rank, and the spastic alternation between periods of incredibly demanding work and the boredom of the lull between battles. He commented on the local inhabitants, the country, the terrain, and an occasional tourist visit, and he always asked about his infant daughter. The hospital followed the Army across North Africa from Casablanca to Bizerte. Collins took care of skin disease cases, met British medical staff and touring consultants, learned how to survive in the field, did a great deal of reading, and offered advice to his wife on managing her home front. He spent most of his professional time in surgery: initially, as an assistant; later, doing minor surgery; and by 1945, doing amputations, major wound debridement, and nonbattle cases—hernias, hemorrhoids, circumcisions, and so on. As a junior officer (finally promoted to captain in November 1943) he rotated in assignment as the hospital workload required—to medical wards, the receiving ward, and sick call—but mostly he did surgery. He was ordered to be the gas gangrene expert, and the survival data on his patients document that he did indeed become an expert at managing these difficult cases. In September 1943 the hospital moved to Italy, after the Salerno landings, and followed the fighting. Heavy combat would send them more than a thousand [End Page 739] patients and a punishing and exhausting workload. The unit moved several times and never seemed to escape the rain. On 27 January 1944 the hospital landed at Anzio. Some of the bitterest fighting of the Italian campaign surged around the constricted Allied beachhead pinned down by fierce German opposition. Three evacuation hospitals were in that crowded area, and all were inadvertently hit by artillery shells and bombs: hospitals were too near legitimate targets and all had patients and medical personnel killed and wounded. The letters from the beachhead are purposefully reassuring, but Collins’s long “after action” letter of 15 April 1944 (pp. 199–208) just after leaving the beachhead is a wonderful description of what it was like to care for hundreds of wounded, to do surgery under fire, to try to sleep in foxholes, and to be hungry and dirty and tired and frightened. In that battle, the hospitals were literally in the front lines—so much so, that patients would desert back to the front, claiming it was safer in combat. After leaving Anzio, the unit followed the Army north to Rome, Bologna, the Gustav Line—a seasoned unit and a seasoned Captain Collins. At the very end of the war and afterward, captured and surrendered German soldiers were the majority of the hospital’s patients. Weary and tired of war, yet justly proud of the accomplishments of his hospital and himself, Collins finally arrived home in Texas...