Bibliographical Note
Primary Sources
The most important collections of source material for thisvolume were the central files of the Surgeon General's Office and the files ofthe Historical Unit, Army Medical Service, Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thecentral files of the Surgeon General's Office for the war period have beenretired and are now in the custody of The Adjutant General. They containofficial correspondence, memoranda, and reports originating in the SurgeonGeneral's Office, as well as numerous documents received by this Office fromother sources, both military and civilian. These files, like those of most Armyagencies, are arranged by subject under a numerical or decimal system. Forexample, documents on the construction of hospitals are filed under 632; of carsfor hospital trains, under 531.4; and of hospital ships, under 560. To includehere all of the numerical classifications of documents used in the preparationof this volume, or even those used most often, is both undesirable andunnecessary because the list would be too long and would duplicate informationreadily available in footnotes throughout the volume.
The files of the Historical Unit are extensive, having beenbuilt up by the Historical Division, Office of The Surgeon General (predecessorof the Historical Unit) during the war years. Of particular importance in theHistorical Unit files are the annual reports submitted during the war by TheSurgeon General, divisions of the Surgeon General's Office handlinghospitalization and evacuation matters, surgeons of large commands, andcommanding officers of hospitalization and evacuation units and installationsthat ranged from 3,000-bed hospitals to separate ambulance companies. Althoughthese annual reports obviously must be used with caution, because surgeons andcommanders in some instances undoubtedly attempted to present the most favorableview possible of their activities, they contain a wealth of information nototherwise available. In addition, many of them contain excellent discussions ofMedical Department shortcomings, because they afforded surgeons and commandersan opportunity to complain about matters over which they were disturbed but hadno control. The absence of complete sets of annual reports of the Air and GroundSurgeons for the war years is regrettable. The Historical Unit also has custodyof wartime working files of several divisions of the Surgeon General's Office.The most important among them for this volume were those of the Mobilization andOverseas Operations Division, the Medical Regulating Unit, and the ResourcesAnalysis Division. To supplement these papers, the Unit periodically borrowedwartime documents from current office files of the Medical Facilities PlanningBranch (formerly Hospital Construction Branch), Medical Statistics Division,Resources Analysis Division, Supply Division, and Medical Research andDevelopment Board of the Surgeon General's Office. The Historical
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Unit also has a large decimal file; most of the papers in it,however, are carbon copies of those in The Surgeon General's central files.Supplementing these files and sometimes serving as a clue to the location ofother important documents are the diaries of divisions of the Surgeon General'sOffice covering the period from the fall of 1943 to the end of the war. Inaddition, the Historical Unit has a copy of the testimony and report of theCommittee to Study the Medical Department (1942) and a compilation ofrecommendations of the Committee and actions on them by the Surgeon General'sOffice. Portions of these documents were extremely useful for information onrelations between the Surgeon General's Office and the SOS Hospitalization andEvacuation Branch and on developments in hospitalization and evacuation up tothe end of 1942. Also of interest for this volume, the Historical Unit hasmicrofilm of The Adjutant General's unit cards (large cards giving inabbreviated form the chronology and history of individual military units) ofMedical Department organizations, including hospitalization and evacuationunits. (The original cards are filed in the Organization and Directory Section,Operations Branch, Administrative Services Division, Adjutant General'sOffice.) Other documents and materials belonging at present to the HistoricalUnit were used in this study, but it is unnecessary to mention themspecifically.
When this volume was written, the Historical Unit had in itscustody, on indefinite loan, three blocks of files of considerable significance.The Wilson files-so called because they were built up and used by Col. WilliamL. Wilson, M. C.-were on loan from the Historical Records Section,Departmental Records Branch, Adjutant General's Office. Covering a period fromMay 1941, when Colonel Wilson was in G-4, until June 1943, shortly after he leftASF headquarters, these files are actually unofficial records of the ASFHospitalization and Evacuation Branch. They contain a full set of staybacks, adiary, a decimal file, a subject file, and a file of operational plans submittedby medical installations in the United States. The Ground Medical Section files,containing papers from the Ground Surgeon's Office, were on loan fromHeadquarters, Army Field Forces, Fort Monroe, Va. Important but not as extensiveas would be desired, these files contain several sets of staybacks and manyannual reports of Army Ground Forces medical units. On loan from the Air Forces,but recently returned to the Historical Division, Office of The Surgeon General,Department of the Air Forces, were files of the Air Surgeon's HistoricalDivision. In addition to annual reports and wartime histories of many AAFmedical installations and commands, these files contain several folders of theAir Surgeon's correspondence, including interoffice memos, on hospitalizationand evacuation.
Next in importance to the files of the Surgeon General'sOffice and the Historical Unit for this study were certain files of ASFheadquarters and the War Department General Staff, which are in the custody ofthe Historical Records Section, Departmental Records Branch, Adjutant General'sOffice. The most useful ASF files were those of the Control and PlanningDivisions, and the folders dealing with Medical Department activities that werekept and used during the war by Generals Somervell, Styer, and Lutes. Of theGeneral Staff files, those of G-4 were naturally most rewarding, but those ofG-1, G-3, and OPD were also consulted with success
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in many instances. Conclusive information, particularly aboutcontroversies or disputes that reached high levels of authority for decision orsolution, could be found often only in the files of the Chief of Staff, U. S.Army, the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and the Secretary of War. Otherfiles in the custody of The Adjutant General which it was frequently necessaryto use were those of the technical services that assisted the Medical Departmentin its hospitalization and evacuation operations; among them were theQuartermaster Corps, the Corps of Engineers, and the Transportation Corps. Whilethe wartime files of AAF and AGF headquarters were available and useful, it wasparticularly disturbing to be unable to find among them anything resemblingcentral files of the offices of the Air and Ground Surgeons. Finally, andcertainly not of least importance, were the files maintained by The AdjutantGeneral during the war. Because his Office was the War Department's office ofrecord, all official communications to and from the General Staff found theirway into the AG files.
Printed primary sources were also used in the preparation ofthis volume, but because of the wide circulation they enjoyed it is unnecessaryto indicate the depositories in which they are located. Obviously Armyregulations, War Department circulars, field manuals, technical manuals, tablesof organization and equipment, and the like, are basic sources for any militaryhistory. Of interest because they helped the writer fit the history ofhospitalization and evacuation into a larger picture are the biennial reports ofthe Chief of Staff of the Army and the annual reports of the Secretary of War.Although no systematic search was made of Congressional committee reports, a fewwere used when they appeared to have a direct bearing on the subject underconsideration.
As noted at greater length in the preface, the writer also derived muchinformation from interviews and correspondence with persons active in MedicalDepartment affairs during the war.
Secondary Sources
While there are no published monographs or special studies on Armyhospitalization and evacuation during World War II, there are a number ofunpublished preliminary histories and historical monographs on MedicalDepartment activities that have been helpful to the writer of this volume. Amongthem are a group of studies prepared by the Historical Division, Office of TheSurgeon General, immediately after the end of the war. They are the following:[Samuel M. Goodman], A Summary of the Training of Army Service Forces MedicalDepartment Personnel, 1 July 1939-31 December 1944; Harold P. James,Transportation of the Sick and Wounded; John B. Johnson, Jr., and Graves H.Wilson, A History of Wartime Research and Development of Medical FieldEquipment; Richard L. Laughlin, [History of] Reconditioning [in the U. S. Armyin World War II]; Edward J. Morgan and Donald O. Wagner, The Organization of theMedical Department in the Zone of the Interior; and Richard E. Yates, TheProcurement and Distribution of Medical Supplies in the Zone of Interior duringWorld War II. Two unpublished histories prepared by Florence A. Blanchfield andMary W. Standlee, Organized Nursing in the Army in Three Wars (1950) and TheArmy Nurse Corps in World War II (1950), supplied background informa-
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tion for the discussion of the "shortage" of nursesin zone of interior hospitals. Hubert A. Coleman, Organization andAdministration, AAF Medical Services in the Zone of Interior (1948), wasparticularly helpful in the preparation of sections on AAF hospitalization andevacuation. Parts of this work are essentially copies of histories or reportssubmitted by AAF medical installations to the Air Surgeon's Office and likeall such documents must be used with care. The chapters actually prepared byColeman and his assistants are scholarly and reliable. The Historical Unit hascopies of all of the works named above. Two of my colleagues, Blanche B.Armfield and John H. McMinn, deserve special mention because they not only madeavailable drafts of chapters of volumes which they are preparing on MedicalDepartment organization and personnel, respectively, but they also gave theauthor full benefit of their knowledge both through frequent discussions andthrough criticisms of his manuscript.
A variety of other unpublished histories were consulted,often with unexpectedly good results. Wartime histories of the Planning andControl Divisions of ASF headquarters supplied information that undoubtedlyexisted in documents which could not be located in ASF files. Histories ofMedical Department activities of the Air Transport Command, its FerryingDivision, I Troop Carrier Command, and the Fourth Air Force were used tosupplement information found in the files of AAF headquarters. Wartime historiesof Medical Department activities in overseas commands, on file in the HistoricalUnit, supplied information that occasionally threw light upon some aspects ofzone of interior hospitalization and evacuation.
Another group of documents which the author used, but withcaution, needs to be mentioned. While some purport to be histories, all of themare in fact final reports of the offices concerned. On file in the HistoricalUnit, they are as follows: Margaret D. Craighill, History of Women's MedicalUnit [Office of The Surgeon General]; History of Medical Liaison Office to theOCT and Medical Regulating Service, Office of The Surgeon General; History,Office of the Surgeon, Second Corps Area and Second Service Command, from 9September 1940 to 2 September 1945; Historical Record, Laundry Section, HospitalDivision, [Office of The Surgeon General]; History of the Organization andEquipment Allowance Branch, [Office of The Surgeon General]; Rene M. Juchli,Record of Events in the Treatment of Prisoners of War, World War II; andAchilles L. Tynes, Data for Preparation of Historical Record of ConstructionBranch of the Surgeon General's Office during the Expansion Period of the Armyand World War II.
Published histories, or those well along in the publicationprocess, used in the preparation of this volume need only to be listed. Amongthem are several volumes (including three in manuscript form) of the UNITEDSTATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II: Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: TheOperations Division (Washington, 1951); Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild,Defense of the Americas, Vol. I (MS.); Kent R. Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer andBell I. Wiley, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington,1947); Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (MS.); Maurice Matloff andEdwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-42 (Washington,1953); John D. Millett, The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces (Washing-
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ton, 1954); Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley and William R.Keast, The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops (Washington,1948); Jesse A. Remington and Lenore Fine, The Corps of Engineers: Constructionin the United States (MS.); Erna Risch, The Quartermaster Corps:Organization, Supply and Services, Vol. I (Washington, 1953); Mattie E.Treadwell, The Women's Army Corps (Washington, 1954); Chester Wardlow, TheTransportation Corps: Responsibilities, Organization, and Operations (Washington,1951); and Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington,1950). Use was also made of Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate (eds.), TheArmy Air Forces in World War II (Chicago, 1948 and ff). Other publishedhistories consulted were: Percy M. Ashburn, A History of the MedicalDepartment of the United States Army (Boston, 1929); Roland W. Charles, Troopshipsof World War II (Washington, 1947); Engineer, Office of the Chief, GeneralHeadquarters Army Forces, Pacific, Engineers in Theater Operations inENGINEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC, 1941-45, Vol. I. (1947); LogisticalHistory of NATOUSA -MTOUSA (Naples, Italy, 1945); The Medical Departmentof the United States Army in the World War, Vol. I (Washington, 1923), Vol.V (Washington, 1923), Vol. VIII (Washington, 1925), and Vol. XIII (Washington,1927); William C. Menninger, Psychiatry in a Troubled World (New York,1948); and Howard A. Rusk, "Convalescence and Rehabilitation," inMorris Fishbein (ed.), Doctors at War (New York, 1945). Various usefulhistorical articles were found also in The Air Surgeon's Bulletin, the ArmyMedical Bulletin, the Journal of Aviation Medicine, and TheMilitary Surgeon.
