Wounded would be gathered at them and an initial diagnosis, triage, and tagging would be performed. The latter contained eight men composed of a doctor, medics, and litter-bearers. The first line of care was organized around two groups: a battalion aid station and a separate forward collecting station. Combat medical care doctrine in Korea consisted of a relay system. By the following year, 90 percent of the doctors stationed in Korea were draftees. A doctor draft was instituted in August 1950, and the first medical draftees arrived in Korea in January 1951.
The most acute shortage was with doctors, particularly specialists. Like the other organizations within the military, when the war started in June 1950, the medical departments were short of everything. 20, 1951, half would have died if only ground transportation had been used. The Eighth Army command surgeon estimated that of the 750 critically wounded soldiers evacuated on Feb. Another example tellingly highlights the impact of the helicopter. Bowler, set a record of 824 medical evacuations over a 10-month period. Howard wrote, “fundamentally changed the Army’s medicalevacuation doctrine.” Helicopter medevacs transported more than 20,000 casualties during the war. Both had been developed and used to a limited extent prior to 1950, but it was in the Korean War that both – particularly the helicopter – came into their own, and, as Army Maj.
That success is attributed to the combination of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH unit, and the aeromedical evacuation system – the casualty evacuation (casevac) and medical evacuation (medevac) helicopter. In the Korean War, that number was cut almost in half, to 2.5 percent. In World War II, the fatality rate for seriously wounded soldiers was 4.5 percent. Though the Korean War came to be regarded as a failure by many because of its unsettled conclusion, in one area it was an unreserved success: the care and treatment of wounded soldiers.
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