Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2015/Op-ed


 * By TomStar81

It is one of the commandments of war that no discussion of military action is complete without acknowledging the personnel - men and women - who follow behind the armed forces in order to treat the sick and wounded. Throughout recorded history doctors, nurses, and the deities worshipped by war faring factions have always played a part in the role of rest, recovery, and recuperation. In World War I the care of the troops on the front lines would fall to a new generation of nurses and doctors who would be tested by casualties rates unseen among European nations since the 100-days offensive led by Napoleon and higher than those sustained in the Crimean War. More significantly, the World War I-era medical practitioners would be guided in their duty to care for the injured by the example set down by Florence Nightingale and by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The role on the International Committee of the Red Cross in World War I would also set a record at that time for being the largest nominally neutral party offering aid and assistance to both sides in the war, a humanitarian feat of epic proportions for the time considering how determined the Allied and Central Powers were to employ any available weapon to achieve victory.

Thanks to the industrial revolution, the ability to move the sick and injured from the battlefield had also been greatly improved with the introduction of machines and the signing of the First and Second Geneva Conventions, which provided protection for the sick and injured, and laid out rules for the protection of prisoners of war. When World War I erupted in Europe the Red Cross movement mobilized in force, bringing in personal from across the world to assist with the sick and injured, setting up exchange system to ensure that Prisoners of War could send out postcards to loved ones, organizing the exchange of enemy prisoners of war, and monitoring the battlefields to ensure compliance with the then existing treaties. The monitoring of battlefields for treaty compliance would result in the ICRC becoming one the earliest groups to protest the use of chemical weaponry on the field of battle.

On the fields of battle themselves the Red Cross would become a very visible presence. As horse drawn carriages gave way to mechanical vehicles, the ambulance would see an evaluation to a motor driven vehicle which would sport the now iconic red and white paint scheme that denoted a medical unit on the field. In addition to the ambulances, hospital trains and hospital ships sporting the same color scheme would become part of the battlefields in the course of war. In the aftermath of the 1914 battle at Flanders alone, these hospital trains would evacuate over 100,000 British combat casualties. As an added bonus, these trains were able to connect with hospital ships at French channel ports in order to repatriate the wounded British soldiers back to England. Surviving texts from the time refer to these trains as "Great White Hospital Trains" owing to the fact that the carriages were often painted white or red and white.

In the field and on the home front, the science behind medicine had begun to advance with the introduction of anesthetics and a better if still rudimentary understanding bacterial and virus related infections. These understandings helped to improve the survivability of the soldiers fighting the war, who were in turn treated by the first generation of medical professionals to come up in following the footsteps of the then late Florence Nightingale. Nightingale had served as a nurse in the Crimean War, and during that time she came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses who were trained by her to tend to wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a highly favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night. As a result of her efforts, nurses in the war would strive to follow her example of compassion, commitment to patient care and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration, traits which have endured to this day.

The monumental role that the International Committee of the Red Cross would play in World War I is perhaps best attested to in 1917, when the organization received the only Nobel Peace Prize awarded during World War I "...[For undertaking] the tremendous task of trying to protect the rights of the many prisoners of war on all sides [of World War I], including their right to establish contacts with their families", a noteworthy achievement considering the unimaginable demands placed upon the International Committee of the Red Cross to be a voice for those wounded, captured, or displaced by the war. The ideals of the International Committee of the Red Cross survive today in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which trace their ideological founding to the original IRCR in 1859 and strive to carry forward the mission of protecting humanity from itself in times of war, and to assist those in need of aid in times of natural disaster. Among the men and women who served under the banner of the Red Cross, uncommon compassion was -and remains - a common virtue.