University of Virginia Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

8th Evacuation Exhibit > Deployment In North Africa and Italy

Deployment In North Africa and Italy

Operation Torch, Casablanca, Algiers, Sicily, and Salerno

The Provisional General Hospital in Casablanca

On November 1, 1942, the men from the 8th Evacuation Hospital were on the U.S.S. Santa Paula. The ship set sail the next day before dawn without the nurses due to concern for their safety, given the possibility of disembarking in a combat zone. The Santa Paula was part of a huge convoy of 35 to 40 ships, including a battleship, a cruiser, an aircraft carrier, and an assortment of destroyers, freighters, and troop transports. Unknown to them at the time, the men from the University unit were part of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa.

The new year of 1943 was ushered in by the unit’s first air raid:

No one seemed to know what to do, but nearly everyone was doing what he ought not to have done. Some patients ran around on the roof for a better view of the spectacle, and others congregated in the courtyard and in front of windows; they yelled encouragement to the anti-aircraft crews and shouted insults at the Nazi bombers. The frenzied activity reminded one of a crowd at a traditional American Football game. The fact that there was danger seemed to have entered no one’s mind…tents and doors were struck, and in the morning bushels of shrapnel were picked up from the roof of the hospital and the courtyard. The disorganization at the hospital during the raid pointed out a serious defect in the unit’s training and preparedness. This defect was quickly remedied; when the next alert came several nights later, the hospital was completely blacked out, and the personnel moved all patients to the ground floor or basement, where they remained until the “all clear” sounded (Leavell, p. 57).

Lieutenant Colonel Putnam was forced to give up his command of the 8th Evac when he suffered a perforated ulcer in January. Lieutenant Colonel E. Cato Drash became acting commanding officer until Colonel John W. McKoan, a graduate of the Harvard University Medical School, arrived. Colonel McKoan oversaw the closing of the hospital at the Italian Consulate a little less than four months after its establishment. In that time there were nearly 4200 admissions. Eighty-four percent of the admissions were due to disease, fifteen percent were injuries, and about one percent were battle casualties from the initial invasion of French Morocco and the New Year’s Eve air raid. In addition to inpatients, thousands of outpatients were treated in outpatient departments and the dental clinic.

Closing Operations in North Africa

On March 14th the 8th Evacuation Hospital moved to a new location on Anfa Hill and four days later began to function as a convalescent hospital. On the same day First Lieutenant Ruth Beery and 51 nurses arrived in Casablanca on the transport John Ericcson. While awaiting approval to sail to Africa, the nurses had been working at Halloran General Hospital on Staten Island, New York. They cared for servicemen who had been wounded in the North African invasion, including some who had been treated at the hospital staffed by the 8th Evacuation unit in Casablanca.

On May 8, 1943, the Tunisia campaign came to a successful conclusion exactly six months after the Allied landings in North Africa. By early June the hospital was dismantled and parked while the staff awaited orders for the next move. During its two months of service as a convalescent hospital, the staff cared for nearly 1460 inpatients. Forty-eight percent were classified as diseased, thirty percent as injured, and twenty-two percent as wounded.