Another way home...
Prior to 1942, U.S. hospital ships did not exist. The need for ships to transport military medical evacuees home became clear by March 1944. With the buildup of troops before D-Day, existing ETO Army hospital beds needed to be emptied to make room for anticipated casualties.
An Army-Navy dispute over how many ships to build and who would operate them caused a significant delay. Finally, the Army received the go ahead to develop its own fleet of 24 hospital ships. The majority of the hospital fleet was comprised of passenger and cargo vessels, freighters, and Liberty ships. Refitting these ships into medical facilities was a slow process.
Commanded and operated by the Navy, the first U.S. hospital ships were finally ready to sail to Europe in 1943. Medical teams were comprised solely of Army personnel. Fifteen more ships sailed overseas in 1944 with another six added to the fleet in early 1945. The 1907 Hague Convention required hospital ships to be unarmed, registered with friendly and enemy powers, and usable only for medical purposes. Ships were painted white and clearly marked with the red Geneva Cross.
In my novel, Dear Nora, neuropsychiatric nurse Nora writes home to her parents, “It was slow loading since there were many litter patients who were transported to the ship in ambulances. It takes four men to carry a litter. Many other patients are in wheelchairs. The only way onto the ship is up a ramp, but once on board, the ship has two elevators that connect to the other decks, thank goodness. Our convoy of trucks and ambulances seemed to stretch for miles. The ship is full to capacity with 590 patients. It’s fully fitted out with 44 wards, two operating rooms, a pharmacy, dental clinic, two chaplains, and 160 enlisted men. We have three groups of neuro patients—three men who are seriously disturbed and in a small locked and guarded area, 55 soldiers who are borderline and wouldn’t be locked up on land but are in a locked ward here to be safe, and 74 men who are just mildly disturbed and don’t need any kind of restraint. After their time in prison camps, traveling in the hold of a ship without any view of daylight could cause significant setbacks. We plan to take groups of men up on deck every day. It will certainly be different doing my job on a rocking ship.”
Nora continues, “When we docked at Camp Shanks a band played and many people came to welcome us. The crowd was joyous until the wounded boys started to disembark. The public is not accustomed to seeing handless arms, missing legs, and scarred faces.”
CLICK HERE to watch a touching one minute newsreel of patients debarking from the USAHA Arcadia at an east coast U.S. port.
The Germans regularly attacked hospital ships. Seven nations lost a total of 25 hospital ships during World War II, with seven British Empire and six Italian vessels among them.