2ND HOSPITAL UNIT RETURNED

Base Hospital No.5, the Harvard Medical Unit has recently returned to this country. Organized by Dr. Harvey Cushing M.D. '95, under the direction of President Lowell, this group was the second official American Unit to leave for service abroad, sailing May '11, 1917, three days after the Lakeside Unit. Their first post was with the British at Cameras fifteen miles south of Boulogne. After six months there, during which time on Sept. 4, 1917, they were severely bombed and suffered the first casualties of the American Expeditionary Force, the entire Unit was moved to Boulogne, becoming officially known as No. 13 General (Harvard, U.S.A.) Hospital, where it continued until after the signing of the Armistice. The hospital was demobilized on February 1, 1919. During the war many officers were detached for special service with the British or American forces, and a mobile hospital was entirely recruited from Base Hospital No. 5, seeing service in the Argonne under Dr. E. B. Towne.

This hospital probably had the most interesting and varied service of any of the base hospitals abroad. The six original base hospitals, of which the Harvard Unit was one, reporting to the British, averaged about 50,000 sick and wounded admissions, the sum total of their work being greater than that of all the other American hospitals of the A.E.F. put together.

Harvard Units Differentiated.

There is a general misunderstanding and confusion concerning the different Harvard Hospital Units. The following extracts from a communication of Dr. Cushing to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal states concisely the history of these Units.

"In 1915 the Western Reserve University sent a Unit to Paris to serve for a period of three months in the American Ambulance at Neuilly. This group was followed by a Harvard Unit, which served with the French for the next three months.

"The success of these ventures led to a proposal, fostered by Mr. Robert Bacon, Sir William Osler, and others, that certain American universities send similar units to serve with the British, and Harvard contributed another Unit, under the command of Dr. Cabot, which, since 1915, was stationed at No. 22 General Hospital, Camiers, with the B. E. F."

Of the organization of Base Hospital No. 5 in the United States Service Dr. Cushing says: "The membership of this Unit was chosen to be as representative as possible of the Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals. It is incorrect, therefore, to state that Base Hospital No. 5 was composed of doctors and nurses from Brigham Hospital."

"Base Hospital No. 5," he continues, "was one of the first six hospitals sent overseas, all of which were apportioned to the British Expeditionary Forces and it happens to be the only one of the three Units organized with a Harvard University background which contributed to the Medical Service of the A. E. F."