Fort George G. Meade: The First 100 Years

Medical care on Camp Meade
WORLD WAR I YEARS
51
Along with the furious construction, recruiting and
training that took place on Camp Meade in 1917, the
infrastructure to provide medical care at the camp and on
the battlefield developed at breakneck speed.
Base Hospital No. 42 was organized, trained and
equipped to serve as an overseas medical unit consisting
of officers, enlisted personnel and nurses, 30 of which
were graduates of The University of Maryland School
of Nursing. The civilian nurses were organized and
mobilized through The Red Cross with the understanding
they would be serving overseas.
These medical personnel received part of their training
while on Camp Meade base hospital by treating the
soldiers going through their own training in preparation
for war. While doctors, nurses and other medical
personnel treated the injured and ill patients for things
like pneumonia, measles, mumps and meningitis, the
Army assessed the medical personnel staff for stamina
and professional capability to determine their fitness for
duty on the battlefield.
In the end, BH 42 deployed 100 nurses, 35 officers and
200 enlisted men. On June 20, 1918, the selected hospital
staff traveled to Camp Mills, New York, remaining there
until June 27, 1918. On June 28, they left Hoboken,
New Jersey, on The Metagama, on their way to Liverpool,
England. Arriving in Liverpool on July 10, Base Hospital
No. 42, immediately boarded trains and traveled to
Southampton, then on July 11, crossed the English
Channel. They reached Cherbourg France, July 12, where
they boarded yet another train headed for Bazoilles-sur-
Meuse, finally arriving at their destination on July 15,
1918.
Overseas, base hospitals were generally located a safe
distance from combat zones and provided more extensive
and definitive treatment to the wounded in fixed facilities.
They operated in conjunction with battlefield first aid,
dressing stations, ambulances and hospital trains as well
as field, mobile, evacuation, convalescent and camp
hospitals.
BH 42 was the fifth hospital to arrive in Bazoilles and
was just one of 127 AEF base hospital units in France.
They began receiving patients on July 19 and soon
became established as a special hospital for treatment of
wounds to the jaw or face, called maxillofacial cases. As
often happens during conflict, out of necessity, medicine
made advances as doctors tried whatever they could to
save lives. The innovative care developed for maxillofacial
cases during WWI was the precursor to plastic surgery. In
addition to rebuilding faces, cases of mumps and measles
were also referred to BH 42.
Back home on Camp Meade, the same proximity to
railroads and shipping lines that made Camp Meade an
attractive place to locate a training and embarkation point,
also made it an attractive place when it came to evacuating
the wounded from the battlefield.
The Camp's hospital was built and staffed in what
became a standard configuration, with 40 officers, 50
enlisted men, and a complex of 105 buildings in 36
separate wards of 34 beds each. The massive undertaking
of building the Camp Meade hospital began in August
1917 and accepted their first patients in November of
that year.
The hospital on Camp Meade also benefited from its
proximity to Baltimore, located only a few miles to the
north. Fort McHenry, best known for its role during the
war of 1812, saw far more activity during WWI when it
became U.S. Army General Hospital No. 2, one of the
largest of the wartime hospitals. With 3,000 beds, more
than 20,000 wounded were treated and transferred to
other locations for further recovery and rehabilitation,
many of them to Camp Meade's reconstruction school.
All medical personnel, whether stateside or overseas,
were challenged by the Spanish influenza pandemic of
1918-1919 which quickly spread, claiming more victims
than those killed on the battlefields.
***
(Left) Base Hospital consisted of 105 buildings in 36 wards
of 34 beds each. A rolling library helped troops through their
convalescence.