133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance

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133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance
Medical
RoleAirborne forces
SizeField Ambulance
Part of4th Parachute Brigade
EngagementsOperation Slapstick
Battle of Arnhem
Operation Doomsday
Insignia
The emblem of the Second World War British Airborne Forces, Bellerophon riding the flying horse Pegasus

The 133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance was a Royal Army Medical Corps unit of the British Army's airborne forces during the Second World War.

The 133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance was formed in Palestine in January 1943, by the conversion of the 133rd Field Ambulance to parachute duties. It was then assigned to the 4th Parachute Brigade, part of the 1st Airborne Division.

As part of the 1st Airborne Division it took part in

prisoners of war. Reformed after the battle the 133rd took part in Operation Doomsday
in Norway after the end of the Second World War.

Background

Impressed by the success of German airborne operations, during the

1st Parachute Brigade began forming, comprising three parachute infantry battalions.[2] In keeping with British Army practice at the same time as the infantry battalions were forming, airborne supporting arms were formed including Royal Army Medical Corps volunteers.[3]
Of the seven airborne
field ambulances formed during the Second World War, two were glider borne the 181st and the 195th. While the other five were parachute trained the 16th, 127th, 133rd, 224th and the 225th.[4]

133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance

Commanded by

4th Parachute Brigade.[7] All members of the Field Ambulance had to undergo a twelve-day parachute training course carried out at No. 4 Parachute Training School RAF, in Palestine. Initial parachute jumps were from a converted barrage balloon and finished with five parachute jumps from an aircraft.[8][nb 1] Anyone failing to complete a descent was returned to his old unit. Those men who successfully completed the parachute course, were presented with their parachute wings.[8][10] The 4th Parachute Brigade left Palestine on 26 May 1943, to join the 1st Airborne Division at Sousse in Tunisia. On arrival the men of the field ambulance were presented with their airborne forces maroon beret.[11]

The war establishment of a Parachute Field Ambulance, was 177 all ranks.[12] Consisting of thirteen doctors in two surgical teams and four sections.[12] The doctors could deal with 330 cases in a twenty-four-hour period. Each surgical team could handle 1.8 operations an hour.[13] However this was not sustainable and if they were required to operate the following day, the team had to be relieved after twelve hours.[13] It was envisaged that during airborne operations, it would not be possible to evacuate casualties until the ground forces had linked up with them.[6] To accommodate this the field ambulance had the ability to treat all types of wounds, and provide post operative care for up to fourteen days.[nb 2] They also had the transport required to evacuate casualties from the Regimental Aid Post (RAP), to the Main Dressing Station (MDS).[14]

Parachute Field Ambulance troops just before boarding their aircraft.

An airborne field ambulance was commanded by a lieutenant-colonel, with a

Royal Engineers.[15]

There were four sub units of twenty men known as sections. Each section comprised an officer (doctor) and a staff sergeant (nursing orderly), under their command were three nursing orderlies, a clerk, a dutyman and thirteen stretcher bearers. A section was normally attached to a parachute battalion to supplement their own medical officer and medics.[16][nb 3]

The last component of the Field Ambulance was the Royal Army Service Corps detachment, commanded by a captain, with a company sergeant major as second in command. They had fifty men under them, an electrician, a clerk, thirty-eight drivers, four motorcyclists and five vehicle mechanics.[19] It was normal to have at least two RASC drivers with two jeeps and a trailer attached to each section, the remaining men and vehicles stayed with the headquarters surgical teams.[20]

Airborne operations were in their infancy in the Second World War and the British Army medical services had to design and develop a range of special medical airborne equipment. These included the Don pack, the Sugar pack, the folding airborne stretcher, the folding trestle table, the folding suspension bar, the airborne operating table, the airborne inhaler and special containers for blood and plasma.[13]

Operations

Italy

Ambulance jeep in Italy, fitted with stretchers for carrying wounded.

The first combat operation the 133rd (Parachute) Field Ambulance was involved in was Operation Slapstick, a landing at the port of Taranto during the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943. Slapstick was in part a deception operation, to divert German forces away from the main Allied landings at Salerno (Operation Avalanche), which would be taking place on the same day and also an attempt to seize intact the ports of Taranto and Brindisi.[21] The main advantage of Tranato was its large port. Positioned on the eastern side of the country, together with the expected capture of Naples in the west by the Americans, it would give the Allies two supply points, on opposite sides of the country.[22]

The main part of the 1st Airborne Division sailed from North Africa for Taranto on 8 September 1943, landing on the 9/10 at Taranto unopposed.

156th Parachute Battalion following their capture of Mottola. By the 15 September the MDS was looking after sixty-seven wounded.[24] In the first nine days of the operation the brigade had 101 casualties.[25]

By 22 September the 133rd had taken over, 320 beds in the Rondinella Hospital (the size of a normal army general hospital) and as such was taken over by No. 70 General Hospital when they landed.[25] On 30 September the 133rd moved to Gioia del Colle establishing a 140-bed MDS in a school. soon after the 1st Airborne Division was withdrawn back to England. While in Italy the division's field ambulances had treated 1,728 wounded and performed 194 surgeries.[26]

Arnhem

Stretcher bearers and casualty during the Battle of Arnhem.

The next mission the 133rd were involved with, was

River Rhine at Arnhem in the Netherlands. There was a shortage of transport aircraft, with three airborne divisions being deployed. So the 4th Parachute Brigade were on the second of what was supposed to be three lifts over three days.[27] Only ten officers and 119 other ranks would go by air, the rest of the unit would join them by land when the Allied advance reached Arnhem.[17] The plan called for the 133rd to join the 16th (Parachute) Field Ambulance who had landed the previous day, at the St Elizabeth Hospital in Arnhem.[28]

On Monday 18 September 1944 the second day, 4th Parachute Brigade's lift of ninety-two C-47s (for the paratroops), forty-nine Horsa and nine Hamilcar gliders,[29] were scheduled to arrive furthest away from Arnhem on Ginkel Heath drop zone 'Y', as early as possible on 18 September.[30] Bad weather over England kept the second lift on the ground and the first troops did not arrive in the Netherlands until 15:00. The delay gave the Germans time to approach the northern landing grounds and engage the defenders from the 7th King's Own Scottish Borderers.[31]

Landing under fire the 133rd were widely scattered and it was not until 20:30 that some

anaesthetist) and ten other ranks.[33] On the 20 September the 133rd opened a new dressing station about 100 yards (91 m) from the division's main MDS at the Hotel Taffelberg, by that evening there were around 1,000 wounded being treated by the divisions medical staff.[34] Over the following days the dressing station was subjected to artillery and mortar fire. Then on the 24 September a local armistice was agreed and the majority of the division's walking wounded in the hospital area were evacuated leaving around 300 men who were unable to be moved.[35] By the next day the shelling around the hospital area made it safer for the wounded to remain at their regimental aid posts, rather than take the risk of moving them.[36] By that evening the hospitals had been overrun by the Germans. But 2,100 of the 10,000 men of the 1st Airborne Division were evacuated south of the River Rhine that night.[37] However almost all the division's medical staff twenty-five officers and 400 other ranks had been taken prisoner.[38]

Post war

The 133rd was reformed after Arnhem, and after he was released from custody at the end of the war Lieutenant-Colonel Alford was once more given command. The division never fought another battle in the war but was strong enough for

demobbed sent to the division's other medical units.[41]

Notes

Footnotes
  1. ^ Barrage balloons were used to speed up training jumps and meet the target of 5,000 trained parachutists.[9]
  2. ^ Fourteen days was a medical, not tactical requirement. As casualties with abdominal wounds which had a thirty to forty per cent mortality rate, could not be moved before this.[6][13]
  3. ^ All the units in the brigades and division had a RAMC doctor and up to eighteen RAMC other ranks on their strength,[17][18]
Citations
  1. ^ Otway, p.21
  2. ^ Ferguson, p.6
  3. ^ Cole, p.4
  4. ^ Cole, pp.5–6
  5. ^ a b Cole, p.115
  6. ^ a b c Cole, p.6
  7. ^ Ferguson, p.15
  8. ^ a b Guard, p.224
  9. ^ Reynolds, p.16
  10. ^ Guard, p.226
  11. ^ Cole, p.38
  12. ^ a b Cole, p.9
  13. ^ a b c d Cole, p.8
  14. ^ Cole, p.7
  15. ^ a b c d Cole, p.222
  16. ^ Cole, pp.222–223
  17. ^ a b Cole, p.109
  18. ^ Cole, p.11
  19. ^ Cole, p.223
  20. ^ Cole, p.86
  21. ^ Blumenson, p.94
  22. ^ Blumenson, p.113
  23. ^ Blumenson, p.114
  24. ^ Cole, p.53
  25. ^ a b Cole, p.55
  26. ^ Cole, pp.55–56
  27. ^ Ferguson, p.21
  28. ^ Cole, p.110
  29. ^ Nigl, p.75
  30. ^ Peters and Buist, p.59
  31. ^ Urquhart, p.72
  32. ^ Cole, p.118
  33. ^ Cole, pp.119–120
  34. ^ Cole, p.123
  35. ^ Cole, pp.127–128
  36. ^ Cole, p.132
  37. ^ Cole, p.133
  38. ^ Cole, p.138
  39. ^ Cole, pp.179–180
  40. ^ Cole, p.180
  41. ^ Cole, p.181

References

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