Military Medicine Part II Preview

This tour contains three types of stops:

• HONOR stops mark the gravesites of specific individuals.
• REMEMBER stops commemorate events, ideas, or groups of people.
• EXPLORE stops invite you to discover what this history means to you.

The history of military medicine, and medicine, generally, is a history of eras. In each era, nurses, doctors, and scientists built on the knowledge and research of those who came before them, all united in their goal to prepare and protect service members — whether on or off the battlefield.

• Joel was the first African American medic awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Vietnam War, nicknamed the “Helicopter War,” saw 4,800 helicopter pilots and crew members killed in action, and more than 300 of them are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2018, Arlington National Cemetery memorialized the service and sacrifice of these thousands of men who served throughout Southeast Asia from 1961–1975 with a monument and memorial tree.​

Helicopters were still a fairly new technology at the start of the Vietnam War. The Army began using helicopters for evacuations at the end of World War II; however, the military did not use helicopters in full force until the Vietnam War. Historians estimate that the Army transported between 850,000 and 900,000 U.S. servicemembers, allied servicemembers, and Vietnamese civilians during the war. ​

Before helicopters, wounded service members had to be carried or driven to trained professionals for medical care and often did not receive the care they needed until hours after they were injured.​

Helicopters and their pilots and crew changed this process forever. With a helicopter, it only took an average of 35 minutes to evacuate and provide medical care to wounded servicemembers. Not only did helicopters allow quick evacuation, but they also served as airborne ambulances. Onboard crew could stabilize patients with life threatening injuries like hemorrhaging and traumatic shock while en route to a hospital for more targeted care and surgery.

Medevac/air ambulances gained the callsign and nickname DUSTOFF because of the dust that pilots kicked up at liftoff. DUSTOFF stands for, “Dedicated Unhesitating Service To Our Fighting Forces."​

• Delano was the first chairman of the National Committee on Red Cross Nursing Service and created a plan for the first volunteer American Red Cross nursing unit.
• She served as superintendent of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1909-1912, and made the American Red Cross Nursing Service the official reserve for the Army, Navy, and Public Health Service.

• While in a POW camp, Bradley established a hospital for civilian internees and acted as a head nurse, providing surgical care and medical treatment.
• In 1958, Bradley became the third woman to achieve the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army.

• Higbee was one of the U.S. Navy's first 20 nurses, known as the "Sacred Twenty."
• Higbee served as the second superintendent of the Navy Nurse corps, from 1911-1922.
• She was one of four Navy nurses awarded the Navy Cross for her World War I service.

• Letterman created the first Ambulance Corps along with the triage system.
• He has been called "the father of battlefield medicine."

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, the lack of a formal battlefield evacuation system placed injured soldiers at risk of dying from their wounds. In June 1862, when Letterman assumed the position of Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, the largest force in the Union Army, he instituted the Letterman Plan. Part of the plan called for the establishment of an Ambulance Corps to evacuate soldiers wounded during battles. ​

Letterman also created a tiered system to assess battlefield casualties. Once the men in the Ambulance Corps transported an injured soldier from the battlefield to a nearby aid station, assistant surgeons and medical attendants used tourniquets to limit the flow of blood and administered morphine or whisky for pain. After this preliminary round of care, doctors and attendees determined the severity of the wound and placed the injured soldier into one of four categories: severely wounded, mildly wounded, lightly wounded, or mortally wounded. ​

Soldiers with severe wounds, such as fractures, missing limbs, or severe bleeding, were marked as first priority and brought to a nearby field hospital for immediate medical care. If the soldier survived, they were transported to a hospital in a nearby city to recuperate and receive long-term care. Soldiers in stable condition with mild wounds were marked as second priority and remained at the aid station until all of the severely wounded soldiers were attended to and removed. Soldiers with minimal injuries that required bandages were marked as third priority. After receiving treatment, medical attendants ordered soldiers to return to their units. Soldiers that arrived at the aid station with mortal wounds to their head or chest were made comfortable, possibly received their last rites, and left to die. ​

During the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, Letterman’s plan was tested. The tiered system proved successful when the Medical Department successfully removed 17,000 wounded soldiers from the battlefield within 24 hours. The system also withstood the heavy casualties from the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Gettysburg. ​

Today, we know Letterman’s tiered system as triage. It is used by Emergency Medical Services and combat medic units to apply the best form of care to as many people as possible.​

• Reed was a pioneering bacteriologist whose experiments confirmed that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitos.
• He also headed a team that discovered how typhoid was spread through contamination.

In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain over Spanish rule in Cuba. During this conflict, disease was the most common cause of death for soldiers. In 1900, the United States still had troops stationed in Cuba and Army Surgeon General George Sternberg sent a group of Army doctors to Cuba to study yellow fever. Walter Reed headed the study.​

The team began by testing the theory of Italian bacteriologist Guiseppe Sanarelli that yellow fever was caused by the bacteria bacillus icteroides. At the time, this was the most widely-accepted theory. Unable to find evidence to support Sanarelli’s theory, the team decided to tackle the problem by studying how yellow fever spread. Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay of Havana had theorized that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes. Unable to prove this, he and his work had become a joke.

With Reed called back to Washington, D.C., the Yellow Fever Commission — James Carroll, Jesse Lazear, and Aristides Agramonte — continued their experiments. Experiments involved having mosquitoes bite yellow fever patients and then bite healthy volunteers. Usually experiments at this stage used animals as test subjects. However, many of the animals typically used were not affected by yellow fever. The commission decided they needed to use human volunteers. Volunteers signed a consent form and were paid $100 for participating. They received an additional $100 if they contracted yellow fever. ​

Not expecting the experiment to be successful, Lazear and Carroll also volunteered. Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever but recovered. Lazear also contracted yellow fever and died a short time later. When Reed returned to Cuba, Lazear’s notes were useful in proving the theory and establishing the infection timeline: a mosquito had to bite a yellow fever patient within the first three days of his illness. Then, after 12 days of incubation, the mosquito could pass the disease to another person. ​

• Sabin invented the oral polio vaccine which led to the global eradication of polio.

• A cardiovascular surgeon, Michael DeBakey developed a “roller pump” that enabled open-heart surgery.
• He was the first person to successfully complete a coronary bypass operation and a multiple-organ transplant. ​
• During World War II, he helped develop the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit, for which he was awarded the Legion of Merit.

• Vogel served as a civilian reconstruction aide during World War I.
• While Supervisor of Physical Therapists at Walter Reed General Hospital, she organized the Army's first peacetime physical therapy training course.
• Vogel served as the first chief of the Women's Medical Specialist Corps.

• Johnson-Brown was the first Black woman general in the U.S. Army.
• While serving as chief of the Army Nurse Corps, she worked to implement the first standards of practice within the Army Nurse Corps.

You've reached the end of the Military Medicine: Part II tour. We hope you enjoyed your time exploring the cemetery and learning about the lives of these groundbreaking men and women!

To learn more about military medicine, check out the Military Medicine: Part I tour.

You can explore additional content and resources on the Arlington National Cemetery Education Program website, or find more tours through Arlington National Cemetery's STQRY.