Page 36 - QARANC Vol 14 No 10 2015

34 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Royal Centre
for Defence
Medicine –
Birmingham
Battlefield Tour
Exercise Grey Goose
8 to 12 September 2014
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was over 37 million. There were over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. This year marks the centenary of the start of the First World War thus it seemed appropriate to conduct RCDMs first battlefield tour and remember those who fought for our freedom, courtesy of Major MacLennan and Captain Carmichael who worked extremely hard for many months to organise the tour for Ten tri service medical personnel.
Our tour guides were Colonel David Vassallo RAMC and retired Major Bob Derby ex parachute regiment, whose knowledge and expertise throughout the tour was an extreme source of valuable information to our journey through France and Belgium.
After an extremely long journey from Birmingham to France with one desperate unscheduled stop on the hard shoulder of the motorway, we eventually caught the channel tunnel to Calais. Col Vassallo had come equipped with an informative book by Susan Cohen, Medical Services in the First World War which set the scene for the coming days and was an particularly good read.
We arrived at Arras train station to pick up Bob our guide then onwards to our accommodation for the next two nights in Peronne where the first evening we were to sample the cultural delight and local cuisine of France.
Over the coming days we visited the site where the battle of the Somme took place. This encompassed the main Allied attack on the Western Front during 1916, the Battle of the Somme is famous chiefly on account of the loss of 58,000 British troops (one third of them killed) on the first day of the battle, 1 July 1916, which to this day remains a one-day record.
Visiting the sites of Vimy Ridge and Theipval memorials was a somber occasion with row upon row of headstones of men who had died, a majority of those killed less than 20 years of age. The Vimy Ridge memorial stood magnificent, carved on its wall the names of 11,285 canadian soldiers who were killed in France and whose resting place was then unknown.
Many of the cemeteries were built of what would have been the site of the Regimental Aid Post, RAP. The RAP acted as the chain of evacuation two to three hundred yards behind the front line. They were set up in small spaces such as communication trenches and derelict buildings. The walking wounded would struggle to make their way to the RAP. Here there was a single Regimental Medical Officer (RMO) who would be a qualified doctor, and typically just out of domestic general practice that would have restricted experience of war wounds and even less resources to care for them. Treatment was limited to administering pain relief an anti-tetanus injection
and applying basic dressings.
Days 3 to 5 were spent in Ypres Belgium where we visited
the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery and the grave of Nurse Nellie Spindler, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. She signed to join the Army on 9th November 1915 as a nurse. She arrived in France on 23rd May 1917 and was located at 44 Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) located in Brandhoek. On 21st August 1917 the area was shelled for most of the day. The CCS was shelling was relentless as the enemy were trying to destroy the railway next to the CCS, thus a decision was made to evacuate to another CCS at Remy Sidings and it was thought that as the trains were being loaded Nellie was hit in the chest by shrapnel and died before she could receive any treatment. At the time of her death she was 26 years old and had served for 1 year and 285 days.
This was a poignant moment where Col Vassello gave a short speech of her life, we then remembered her and other nurses who died during the war with a minute’s silence and a wreath laying ceremony.
Just outside Ypres we visited the site of the famed Essex Farm CWGC Cemetery and memorial to John McCrae, a candidate for the most visited site in the Ypres Salient. Essex Farm received its name from a small cottage that stood nearby. The bunkers found here comprised a dressing station from 1915-17. For many years after the war they were flooded and therefore inaccessible, until Ypres town council bought and renovated them in the 1990s.
The last evening was spent in Ypres where we had the