To the frontlines. Hi folks, im doctor moody. This is battalion a station. We are part of the second battalion of the 506 first airborne. Im a physician. Im a doctor that plays doctor. Im an internal medicine physician in here in harrisburg, pennsylvania. This is my hobby. I love it. I love the guys out here, i love speaking to the public i love the educational factor that we are trying to keep all this alive. And the kids really, they enjoy it to i try to make it enjoyable and let them know how important this is to understand what the history was. What this is, this basically is a mobile emergency room. Youve heard of mash, mobile Army Surgical hospital. This is a mobile emergency room. Like an emergency room, what we do, we assess, we treat, we stabilize and then we get them out. Get out of my yard. We are basically located close to the front lines is possible. Weve got to be because weve got troopers coming in here in pretty bad shape. The battalion is just behind alliance. He again demonstrates his value, taking over many jobs as a physician would have the rise have to perform. This freeze the doctors time for more detailed attention to the serious cases. The medics, and they are the real heroes of the war, there are out there triaging and mortar rounds are going all over the place, they will triage in the field. They come to one guy whos got a cut on his shoulder, they say put a bandage on, you can get back to the rear. The second guy has got both legs blown off, half is justice gone, respiration, this guy is going to die. There is nothing in gods green earth that is going to say this guy. They are going to get some lipstick they got from the girlfriend in london and right f for fatal and give him as much morphine as they possibly can, let the guy die in peace and go find somebody that they can safe. The fire and smoke of it, this is the first job of a medic. Men is hit an eight man gets to decide stopping the first sport of blood is all important. Months of training have gone into dressing it wont. Giving shots of morphine to dull the pain. They got another guy they come up to and hes got a band wound bad wound, hes bleeding. Hes got really clammy skin, not answering questions very well. This guys going into shock, he doesnt have much longer to go if we dont get medical attention, so he brings him in here and then the Battalion Surgeon, ive got to triage the triage and ive got to decide which one is the most critical and also which one i can save, remember, these guys are coming in and shock. Blood pressure is low, we dont get the Blood Pressure up theyre going to die, or, they would go into reno failure and that is a death sentence because theres no dialysis in the second world war. What the main reason that i think we save so many lives was because of the plasma. Eat your blood Bank European theater of operation and that held the plasma. The plasma is the fluid component of blood were red blood cells and white blood cells spun off. That is a volume expander, it increases inter vascular volume. We get the ivy started, we get that going and hopefully we get the Blood Pressure up and stabilized, to the point where we can call transportation and get them out. The second part of the war, believe it or not, they actually came up with freeze dried plasma. Which looked like corn starch, and they would mix it with distilled water and that would reconstitute it and there would be your volume expander. Thats what we would give. Somebody asked me, do i do surgery . No, i dont do surgery. Because number one, i dont have general anesthesia equipment. Number two, i cant take time to do that. I spend an hour and theyre cutting off somebodys leg, and ive got five or six more troopers that are out here. The main thing that i have been here, the main quality of this battalion age station that is worth their weight in gold is a seasoned medic. A seasoned medic, they can start the ivys while im working out here, they can advise the doctor. Some of these doctors, how much combat experience to they have . Unless they did the residency in the inner city detroit, not much. The seasoned medics were great. Just like today in the hospital, with the residents and the interns. How much they rely on the season to nurses to help them out. Weve got the guys here, weve got them assessed, we stabilize them and then we call them on myself over here. This is an eighth phone. What it is, its got to diesel batteries attach in here, a generator that i can twist on here and this generates a charge, this can go to the phone on the opposite end. That will ring. I will toggle to talk and i will on toggle to listen. And then i will call for transportation. Say ive got someone with a really bad chest wound that needed surgery like two hours ago. I will call them up, i will say we need somebody here now. We have to get him into surgery. You better get a chest cutter because he hasnt got much longer. We could get transportation here to get him in. From here, they would go to what is called the collecting station, and at the collecting station, what they would do, they would reassess the patient and decide, this guy needs to go to the Field Hospital, this guy has too much vascular issues, thats gonna back to england. This guy, we can get him back to the rear and get him to recover back there. Some here, medical officers, experts and judging the conditions of casualties, sort the patients and determine their disposition. Urgent cases needing a certain specialized type of surgery are turned over to the Field Hospital which is set up close. By the great majority of operations here are four perforateing abdominal wounds, and wounds of the chest like this one. One thing about the battalion aid station, every battalion age station is different. We all have the same purpose and concept but you could have a piece of canvas over a ditch, and call that battalion eight. The main thing is to be as close to the front lines as possible and to be able to get these guys in and get them treated. About 80 of people that left displaced survived, where it was 50 in world war i. I think the main reason was because of the volume expanders, the plasma and also the penicillin. Do i have time to go over all the antibiotics that we had back then . We had penicillin and if you had a penicillin allergy or a sulfur allergy, you are out of luck. Penicillin was discovered in england, the first guy to discover it was like what the heck is this . They shelved it and then they rediscovered it back in 38. But england was concerned back in 1940 about one thing, and that was not getting taken over by the germans. They actually brought the penicillin over to the United States and found the right mold to produce the best yield. And they had a logarithmic curve to develop the penicillin. A lot of times they would use that prophylactically, if there was a patient who had a real dirty wound, id watch it out the best i could give him a slug of penicillin, put a loose dressing on, stabilize him and call for transportation. Get out of my er. No doctor in the right mind wants to be a Battalion Surgeon. I dont want to be here, i want to be in an english hospital with a bunch of goodlooking nurses and a nice warm bed. I dont want to be 200 yards from the front line with bullets going overhead, idiots shooting short rounds at me from the rear. But this is my job. And if i didnt do my job, what would happen . People would die. For the most part, the Battalion Surgeons didnt to jump into combat, they would establish a front, we would be brought in by ship. However, the more i read, the more doctors did jump. There was one doctor who was with the third battalion of the five or six, his name was doctor stanley morgan, captain morgan. He actually did jump in to normandy on june 5th. He immediately spring his ankle, was immediately captured by the germans. Where do you think they put him . They put him to work. He worked right alongside the germans. Couldnt understand a word they said, but it was the same technique. Where did we learn most of our technique from . It was from the germans. The first part of the war, we had a hard time getting surgical instruments. Where were they made . Germany. What is a Battalion Surgeon . Ive got four years of medical school, ive got one year of general medical internship for a licensed physician. There goes my deferment. I was differed from a draft all through that time because they didnt want a medical student. They wanted a doctor. Then i was eligible for the draft, they would get me or i would enlist. I enlisted in the airborne. They pushed me out of the airplane five times, screaming all the way, and then went on to be part of the 3 26 hospital core. This was the hospital corps that was attached to the hundred and first. A lot of the doctors were pretty green when they came in here. They had seasoned doctors but some of the doctors were green, that was why it was so important to have seasoned medics. They would help us that immensely. The medical cabinets that you see. I try to have things that im going to use. Blood pressure cuff, youre saying, this is a Blood Pressure cuff from world war ii, it works. It works with a column of mercury and it is accurate, basically, youve got the laws of gravity in the density mercury. Those things never change. However, how my going to hear Blood Pressure in the heat of battle . Not much. Normally, i would assess him clinically. If the guy was sitting up, and he said daca bouts of morphine . I could feel a peripheral pulse, his Blood Pressure is fine. But if i got a guy that looks cold and clammy, i cant feel any peripheral pulses and every time he sits up he passes out, this is a guy that is going into shock. When we are not doing battle here, this is your dock in the box some guy gets into a fight so him up or if somebody goes into town i give him a slug of penicillin. Everything is in boxes and crates ive got to pack this stuff up. Ive got people that are the bad once. Germans, for the most part, did honor our group. For the most part. Ss, different story. We honored their medical story their medical personnel for the most part. Had a patient onetime who said it was foggy, you couldnt see your hand in front of your face and he said that he sought to germans who looked like they were carrying something. They were getting ready to open fire, the germans said dont shoot, the two german medics that it found one of our troopers that wasnt really bad shape. They brought the trooper in some, they fix the guy. Saved is life. Got the germans and try to scrounge as much food as they could spare, because everybody was starving back then, including the germans. Scrounged up some american cigarettes, gave them to him, then they smuggled the germans back to their own lines. You hear stories like that. There are atrocities on both sides. In this tent, as far as im concerned as a Battalion Surgeon, there is no nationality in this tent. Ive got six guys in front of me, four of them are americans, two of them are germans. Im going to treat the one that needs the most treatment first. Im going to treat the most critical. Im sure there are other Battalion Surgeons that have different types of thoughts but, im a doctor first. What also got back here . Come back into the rear of it. Battalion eight, it would be nice to have something that we could get the trooper out of the element. You would never see a stretcher here by itself. He would always see the stretchers in the field, obviously. We would have saw horses, wed have boxes, crates. Something to get the trooper off the ground so the surgeon could assess and treat. And again, i dont do major surgery here, i dont have time, i dont have general anastasia, but if someone comes in and they have a laceration that needs to be look at, clean it up a little bit and irrigate it out with some water. Give them a slug of penicillin, but a loose dressing on, were not going to close it. The other day people asked where my gloves . Here they are, right here. We dont have disposable gloves back then. Yes they had gloves, for surgery. But after surgery, they have to watch the gloves, then they had to put them on a board to make sure they were confident, then they had to put them in a steam autoclave. I dont have time for that, i dont have room for that, i dont have electricity. I wash my hands the best i can, put some alcohol on it and then go for it. But again, my hands arent in somebodys guts. I hope not. Say somebody has got a major wont, a big hunk of shrapnel sticking in their belly. There is no way im going to pull that out. Im going to leave that there. That can work as attempts them being effect and prevent further bleeding. I pull the thing out a next thing you know, i have something squirting in my face. Then im in a world of hurt. Same thing, if i have a chest wound, a bayonet wound to the chest. Im going to put compression dressings on, stabilize him and then get him out. If the guy had attention in the thorax i would relieve that but the diagnostic skills that ive got here whats between my ears. There is no radiology, no ultrasound, theres nothing like that. Sterilization, we talked about my hands. What about the instruments . The, over there, thats the steam sterilizer, that boils water. Mr. Leslie instruments. The suture that i use, if i were to close something, which most of the time i didnt, would be surgical cotton. And if, for some reason, i could close up any muscle, i would use this. Its as plain. Plain, oh. This is cat got suture attached to a curve cutting needle. This is a little glass vile that has a little crimp in it. You would break this out of the sterile field. This is still sterile after all these years. I dont think that the souter would be any good, but still. Its amazing. They all came in little packages like this. They had the little vials in it. Nowadays, it comes in the little tinfoil, yeah they put those in the field. This is a quotes, portable operating room table. When i get this out, all the troopers run because this is a monster to put together. Battalion aid usually you would see most of these in surgical areas. But its nice to have this here because, like i say, stretchers were not here, they were in the field. Ive gotten off period, somebody comes in a need some work, i can put on this thing to work on him. Iv fluids, we talked about ivy. The bottles, they came in they reconstitute the plasma, after we use the bottles, what do we do with them . Do we throw them away . No. We would reduce them. We would wash them, watch the hoses, nothing was thrown away around here except for sometimes you would see a medic coming from the field. Half is tunic is gone. What happens when he runs out of dressings . Necessity is the mother of invention. He turns off his uniform to start using that. The Battalion Surgeon, this would be my quarters. Im 24 hours per day, seven days a week. I dont have a beat for so they cant get me on the golf course. This would be my bunk. We tried to make everything work here. Yeah we didnt have the luxury of going to get resupply it. What am i going to get more bandages . I have no idea. That is why we have some german bandages around here someplace. A german prisoner of war, the first thing i would ask would be, does he have any bandages . The germans, the first thing the ask of us is do they have any american cigarettes . This is battalion eight. They did a remarkable job. We all love world war ii. We are all history enthusiastics. We love the war, it helps to keep it alive. It helps to educate the youngers. You get a kid today and you asked the kit about pearl harbor and the kids are going to say issues singer . Its important. Its also to pay tribute to the men and women who have died for our country. And the men and women who are still serving our country. I was still the kids, you see a veteran, you go up and shake his hand. If it werent for those guys, we would be eating sauerkraut and fish heads. It is important to do this and to keep it alive. This is why do it. This is why do it. I still dont understand how these guys, they were making life and death decisions. All doctors do. They were making life and death decisions on an hourly basis. And some of these surgeons were the equivalent of a third year medical resident. To decide which one of these guys was going to live in which one would die, i had a Battalion Surgeon, he was a patient and hes gone now. He said that later on in life, he used to have nightmares of people he killed. What do you mean, killed . You saved all these lives. He said yes, but if i had worked faster, if i had worked faster, maybe i couldve got into some of these other people. And i ask him, how did you do it . He goes, it was easy. I had to. Because if i do my job, people would die. That is one of the amazing things. About these guys