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IN THE REAR OF THE FOURTH ARMY 155
exceptional cases, these have to be performed at once in the
open, for instance, to staunch the flow of blood from gaping
wounds. The field hospital staff is military throughout. No
nursing sisters, nor, generally speaking, any volunteer nurses
are to be found here.
The head of the medical service organisation of the Army
Corps is the " Chief Medical Officer " of the Army Corps.
He is assisted by a consulting surgeon who in civil life is
generally a University professor or lecturer and who also
inspects the field hospitals.
We will now proceed to the zone of the lines of communica-
tion. The field hospital is replaced after a time—as soon as
possible when the field operations advance—by a clearing
hospital section. This consists solely of a staff—medical men,
military nursing attendants and volunteer assistants. Each
Army Corps has one such section of nineteen surgeons and a
corresponding number of subordinates.
The field hospital is thus converted, on the advance of the
troops, into a clearing hospital, or, in other words, when the
field hospital with its materiel thus set free or replaced, follows
the troops forward, its place is taken by the clearing hospital,
which retains all that its predecessor has left behind. When,
as at the time of my visit, the advance is slow, no change takes
place and the clearing hospital staff has comparatively little to do.
Clearing hospitals are found wherever the fighting has
given occasion for the establishment of a field hospital, and
therefore also at considerable distances from the main lines of
communication. In the event of hard fighting, clearing
hospital sections with temporary equipment establish their
hospitals side by side with the field hospital. The task of these
hospitals is ultimately to remove by degrees their patients to the
Line of Communication (stationary) hospitals, and to places,
such as Sedan in the case of the 4th Army, from which a
regular railway connection exists with the home country.
The transport of the wounded is effected not only on foot and
in empty transport wagons, but also by the motor-ambulance
vehicles, of the Sick and Wounded Transport Department,
among which one sees ordinary omnibuses from Berlin and
other towns and motor-lorries bearing the names of well-known
factories and business concerns. These may carry up to
seven or ten beds. If slightly wounded are in question, one
single large motor-vehicle can take up to fifty men, but then
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