Page 6 - The Story of the RAMC

Writing about the Trojan wars the old Greek poet Homer gives what must be the earliest description of a regimental aid post and tells how one of Aesculapius’ sons, whom he describes as a “noble leech” and a “godlike hero”, was summoned to treat the bow shot wound of the general Menelaos and having removed the arrow “cunningly spread thereon soothing drugs”.
In the dark ages which followed, however, such medical services as existed were by no means looked upon as “godlike heroes” they were in fact included with the barbers, washerwomen and other camp followers.
In the middle ages the English forces consisted of a number of “private armies” raised by the great feudal barons with their knights, squires and men-at-arms. Many of these brought their own private doctors with them, who, having dealt with the “VIPs”, would, in their charity, treat any of the rank and file who might be able to get to them.
Ambrose Paré, a famous French surgeon writing in 1552, tells how, when the Grand Master of the Artillery was returning to his tent with a wound in his shoulder, a crowd of wounded soldiers trailed after him hoping that his doctor would be able to find time to give them some treatment. The same writer tells how the Duke of Alva reported to the Emperor that soldiers were dying to the number of more than two hundred and, when told they were not “gentlemen or men of mark” but just “poor soldiers”, the latter replied . “Then it is no great loss if they died”. The common soldier was certainly considered as being expendable!
Paré also tells us something of the way in which wounded were evacuated after the retreat from Metz when carts and wagons were requisitioned to bring out the wounded. “Our carters, when they returned, told us the roads were all paved with dead bodies, and they never got half the men there, for they died in the cart and the Spaniards, seeing them at the point of death, before they had breathed their last, threw them out of the carts and buried them in the mud and mire, saying they had no orders to bring back dead men.”
Such is the grim picture of the days when armies went to war with no organised medical services, when medical personnel were among the many camp followers and when disease raging through the armies, was always far more destructive than the bloodiest battles of the campaign.
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