by Natalie Salat

Photos: Canadian War Museum, CWM 19920044-820; PA1132242; PA128851

From top: A patient is loaded onto a hospital train in the Somme in October 1916; Medics practice prior to the raid on Dieppe in August 1942; helicopters were sometimes used to evacuate Canadian wounded in Korea.

From the blood-soaked fields of Flanders and terrible beaches of Dieppe to merciless Korea and landmine-rife Afghanistan, the doctors, nurses and medical personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces have tended to their comrades under the most trying of circumstances. This year, the Canadian Forces Health Services has been commemorating 100 years of service as an official part of the country’s military organization.

“Medical support is a vital part of any military,” observed Canadian Forces Surgeon-General Colonel Scott Cameron. “Over the past century, Canada’s military medical service has grown to today’s comprehensive Canadian Forces Health Services, which includes dentistry, social workers, physiotherapists as well as a wide range of professional health-care providers.”

Major-General Lise Mathieu, who leads the health services branch as director-general, noted that there have been a host of commemorative activities across Canada. “We now have a commemorative envelope, painting and quilt. We held a field medical expert competition at Canadian Forces Base Borden (in Ontario) in June, where 15 teams from across the country competed, and had a big parade at the same time.” In September, Canadian Forces Base Edmonton will hold an Op Med Conference along with a gala dinner at which Chief of Defence Staff General Ray Hénault will be the guest of honour.

Meanwhile, the Canadian War Museum worked with the Department of National Defence to showcase the health services’ work through an indoor photography exhibition called Critical Care and an outdoor demonstration of field medicine by members of the health services.

“The motto of the CF medical services is Militi Succurimus, which means ‘We hasten to support the soldier,’” explained Cameron. “This exhibition demonstrates how the men and women of the Canadian Forces Health Services have lived up to this noble calling throughout our history.” Some 6,000 health-care providers, almost half of whom are in the regular force, form the CFHS today.

Canadians have been providing critical care on the battlefield since the late 19th century. In 1885, when the Northwest Rebellion broke out, Dr. Darby Bergin of Ontario amassed a small group of volunteer nurses, dressers and surgeons to provide care during the short, tense fighting. Then, during the South African War between 1899 and 1902, the professional nurses who accompanied Canadian soldiers overseas became the first Canadian women to serve in military uniform.

When the Canadian Army Medical Corps officially came to be in 1904, “they were a fairly minor operation,” noted Dr. Cameron Pulsifer, a historian at the Canadian War Museum. “Nobody was really expecting the scale of the enterprise that would be required in 1914, when (the corp’s numbers) grew to huge proportions.” During WW I around 21,453 Canadians served in the medical corps, including more than 3,000 nurses. Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, one of the CAMC’s doctors, was inspired to write In Flanders Fields after heavy fighting. “The nature of modern weaponry made the scale of devastation quite awesome,” continued Pulsifer. “The (corps) had one of the largest, most arduous, casualty-inflicting types of war in history to deal with…which they did.” Those who came under their care had a survival rate of 89 per cent. “The big thing was to get patients off the battlefield into care as quickly as possible.”

The process of evacuation from battlefield to dressing station to casualty clearing station to hospital if necessary became more sophisticated during WW II, by which time motorized ambulances became the norm. Also, new medical developments, such as mobile blood transfusions and penicillin, enhanced survival rates. Unfortunately, life-and-death decisions remained ruthless, observed Pulsifer. “Basically you had to decide on those that were hopeless, and you left them, and concentrated on those that could survive.” In Korea, the use of helicopters further enhanced soldiers’ chances of survival.

Outside the Canadian War Museum last summer, Master Corporal Ron Andersen showed a steady crowd of visitors what it’s like to work under circumstances such as combat or humanitarian crisis. The 14-year veteran of the CF, a medical technician with 2 Field Ambulance in Petawawa, Ont., recalled speaking to doctors and medics who had served in Korea. “Their comment is always, ‘Nothing has changed in the delivery process—the stretchers, the trestles, everything apart from the medication is the same.’ They found that quite funny, and we said, ‘If it’s not broken, why fix it?’”

Mathieu noted that the one thing that remains the same is the fact that health care is “all about people. Of course the techniques are different, the equipment is different, and we can do more in the field than we used to, but at the end of the day it boils down to a trusting relationship between a care provider and a serviceperson,” she observed. “We continue to strive to be a combat function that gives confidence to CF members that if anything happens to them, we will be there for them.”