The pivot: the First Australian Casualty Clearing Hospital at the Gallipoli beachhead — the first seven days

Abstract

In October 1914, a new type of medical unit was added to the order of battle of the Australian Army's casualty evacuation chain. Designated the casualty clearing hospital, it was called a Casualty Clearing Station on the beach at Anzac Cove in the Gallipoli campaign. This unit was established as the most forward unit to provide emergency surgery, freeing the forward field ambulances from the necessity of holding wounded soldiers, a task which compromised their mobility and prevented them from moving with the brigades they supported. The Casualty Clearing Station was to be the most forward unit where specialist surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, radiologists and a dentist were to be found. The 1st Australian Casualty Clearing Station (1ACCS) was raised in Hobart and consisted of 93 men including 7 doctors. After some seven weeks of training in camp, the new unit embarked for Egypt and the Gallipoli offensive. They landed on the beach at Anzac Cove at 11 a.m. on 25th April 1915, and remained on a 20 metre stretch of beach through eight months of the Gallipoli campaign. This paper reviews the first seven days of the Station's role at Anzac Cove, during which time this essentially inexperienced medical unit treated and evacuated an estimated 2700 wounded Australian and New Zealand soldiers. This paper also reviews the Commanding Officer's hitherto unpublished war diary and other archival and family records which add to the medical story of Anzac. This frightful baptism of mass casualty evacuation, undergone by the Australian Army Medical Corps, brings a perspective to the problems of mass disasters today.