Base Hospitals
During the War, the U.S. Army established more than 130 of these “mother ship” hospital units, receiving patients from frontline medical units, which triaged them and gave them emergency treatment. The earliest B.H.s began stateside before American troops were in combat as quasi-experiments. At first, each B.H. was only a team of people -- hospital administrators, medical specialists, and technicians assembled by the Army in conjunction with a major medical school. The teams worked out how their future hospital would work: what equipment would be needed, what medical practices would be standard, what procedures would be followed, etc.
As the months passed, the teams set up operational hospitals in buildings, becoming more familiar with equipment and procedures and learning how to work smoothly. When the American Expeditionary Forces left for France, B.H. units went as well, the teams eager to test the lessons they’d learned. Feedback from the experience was positive, and eventually, the Army used the experience’s lessons to create new B.H.s with little input from private medical schools.
Note that Base Hospitals were not all made from the same cookie-cutter – the idea was adapted to different settings. At Limoges, for example, there was a lush campus of many B.H. units laid out among lawns and trees, each unit with its own new pre-fab buildings, some with multiple levels. It resembled a civilian cluster of research facilities more than a wartime hospital. In contrast, many a B.H. built later, when American forces were spearheading the push that swiftly moved the German Front back east, simply requisitioned the nearest suitable shell-scarred school or business and got to work ASAP.
