An Obligation to Heal

A testament to gestures of mercy and kindness in the wake of suffering. On this blog you will find a photographic history of medical personnel, equipment, and research of the wars of the 20th century.

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The American Red Cross 1917

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Canadian soldiers tend to a fallen German on the battlefield at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917.

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WORLD WAR ONE 1916: The Germans attempted to “bleed France white” at Verdun, and the British strove to breakthrough and destroy the Germans along the Somme river. Both were doomed to failure; each a titanic struggle with correspondingly heavy losses.

http://www.greatmilitarybattles.com/html/1916.html 

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Two wounded, G. Scott. Artois, 1915

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A Marine gives a Japanese Soldier a cigarette after discovering the soldier had buried himself and played dead for nearly two days, Iwo Jima, Japan, 1945.

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Stalingrad, winter 1942-1943: Two Soviet soldiers evacuate a wounded comrade from a factory building.

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Allied soldiers of the Free French Forces, wounded in battle during the Italian Campaign, are evacuated from their mountain positions by mule and transferred to American ambulances at an Allied aid station. The Free French fought Axis and Vichy regime troops and served on battlefronts everywhere from the Middle East to Indochina and North Africa. By mid-1944, the Free French Forces numbered more than 400,000 and they participated in the Allied amphibious Normandy landings and ensuing Battle of Normandy, the invasion of Southern France and eventually leading the drive to liberate Paris. Soon they were fighting in Alsace, the Alps and Brittany and took part in the Allied advance through German occupied France and the Allied invasion of Germany. By the end of the war they numbered over 1,300,000 men, making them the fourth-largest Allied army in Europe. Cerasuolo, Province of Isernia, Molise, Italy. 16 January 1944.  

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1914 — Belgium

Two Belgian soldiers of the First World War walking together on the streets. One of them got an eye injury and wasn’t able to see, so his friend helped him.

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An American infantryman picks up a wounded German soldier on the road to St. Lo, France, and helps him into a half-track. The German was reportedly abandoned by his own troops after being wounded. 20 June 1944.

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Tribute to a killed American soldier erected by French civilians, Carentan, France, 17 June 1944. http://wrhstol.com/2wAPNDx

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A marine from the 1st Marine Division comforts a comrade who has just witnessed the death of a friend on Okinawa. May 1945

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Ugo Matania - A French Underground Hospital at Verdun, 1917.

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Gilbert Rogers - Stretcher Bearers of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) Lifting a Wounded Man out of a Trench, 1919.

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A female Soviet medic carries an injured soldier, 1942

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© IWM (Q 6282) German prisoners hauling up British wounded from an RAMC advanced dressing station (in an underground dug-out) by windlass. Sector of the 51st Division, near Trescault, 20 November 1917. Perhaps it has collapsed.

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Wounded German soldiers taken as POWs by American troops during Operation Dragoon wait to be treated by medics at a collection point. Between Cavalaire-sur-Mer and Saint-Raphaël, Var, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France. August 1944. By Henry L. Griffin.

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An Austro-Hungarian soldier wounded during the 11th Battle of the Isonzo, August 1917.