Summary: General film on treatment of casualties by the New Zealand Division on the Western Front during the First World War.
Description: Stretcher cases and walking wounded are taken progressively further to the rear in the chain of medical stations behind the divisional front. Initially wheeled stretchers bring the wounded to a Field Dressing Station. After treatment the men are taken by ambulance to the hospital, Number 3 (New Zealand) Field Ambulance. Soldiers take pails of food to the patients' dining hall, a temporary wooden building. Wounded, including one man being carried on someone's back, enter the dining hall. The ambulances arrive at the hospital (composed chiefly of Nissen huts and tents) and unload their patients. Stretcher cases are carried out of the evacuating ward and taken by ambulance on the next stage of their journey, to the base hospitals. Back at the hospital men who have recovered queue for new equipment. Wearing blankets and hats they hand over their uniforms to be put in steamers for delousing, and enter a delousing hut themselves. Close-ups of three tunic breasts showing the different types of label used to indicate illness or wounds. The ambulances return to the front lines. A Field Dressing Station where injured men sit and wait. One man is brought in (the sun fogs the film on this scene). A man with a head bandage sits smoking and joking with the camera. A stretcher is taken along a rear area trench to a First Aid Post, where it is transferred to a light railway truck and pushed on its way. Back at the Field Ambulance hospital, men leave the evacuating ward in horse-drawn ambulances. Walking wounded reach the hospital, and are taken with the stretcher cases through the various wards.
Personalities, Units and Organisations: British Army, New Zealand Div, Field Ambulance 3 (regiment/service)
New Zealand Military Forces, New Zealand Div & Field Ambulance 3 (regiment/service)
Keywords: medical, New Zealand military - hospital: [+] (object name)
transport, New Zealand military - ambulance (object name)
transport, New Zealand military - animal ambulance (object name)
society, New Zealand military - hygiene (object name)
01/3(4-15) (event)
France (geography)
camera (concept)
