The C.C.S., usually in huts or tents, is the first real hospital behind the firing zone. It may have accommodation for a couple of hundred patients; is supplied with X-Ray equipment, a well-arranged operating room with expert surgical assistance, and is the nearest place to the line that trained nurses are sent. Here for the first time since he left the line the patient gets all those little motherly attentions that only a woman can give. The injured man may be kept here days, weeks, or even months if he happens to be a case that would be endangered by moving. All immediately necessary operations are at once performed, and often a seriously wounded man from the firing line may be lying anesthetized on the operating table of a C.C.S., being operated upon by expert surgeons within two or three hours of receiving his injury--practically as good attention as this type of injury would receive in civil life.
This is particularly the case where a man has been wounded in the abdomen, from which wound he may quickly develop peritonitis and reach the valley of the shadow of death in a few hours if prompt attention is not given. It is also done in cases of head or lung injuries, or in any wound causing uncontrollable hemorrhage. In any of these emergencies, after the M.O. in the line has given all immediately necessary attention, the patient is ticketed SERIOUS by him, and he is rushed with all speed to the A.D.S., perhaps at great personal risk to the stretcher bearers. Here he is quickly transferred to an ambulance which may have to rush him over heavily shelled roads, missing the main dressing station altogether, and taking him direct to the C.C.S. for his life-saving operation.
After varying periods in the C.C.S. the patients are sent by ambulance trains, which run almost to their doors, to base hospitals at the rear. From here they are re-transferred to hospital centers in England and Scotland.
So much for the methods used in caring for the wounded in the lines during stationary periods. The same principles and methods are employed during big advances, but of course on a larger and more thorough scale. All the arrangements are made during the weeks preceding a push; extra stretcher bearers are trained; the field ambulances increase their staffs, particularly just behind the firing lines, in order that the field may be cleared of wounded at the first lull in the fighting. The whole intricate system is so complete and so well arranged that hundreds of cases may be rushed through in a few hours, some of them being comfortably in bed in English hospitals the evening of the day on which they received their "Blighty."