Books and Documents

3D PORTABLE SURGICAL HOSPITAL
14 September 1942-11 December 1945

by

John T. Greenwood, Ph.D.
Chief, Office of Medical History
Office of The Surgeon General, U.S. Army/
Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command
Falls Church, Virginia


The 3d Portable Hospital was established on 14 September 1942 with personnel and equipment from the 42d General Hospital at Brisbane, Australia.  The 42d General Hospital, an affiliated reserve hospital unit, was organized at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and staffed with physicians, surgeons, nurses, and enlisted personnel drawn heavily from that medical school as well as Baltimore area hospitals.  As a result, the surgeons were exceptionally skilled and the enlisted personnel were of a high caliber. The Medical Corps officers assigned to the new unit also had known each other for several years prior to the war, so their working relationships were excellent from the very beginning.

The commander was Maj. William L. Garlick, a 1937 graduate of the George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C., who had 4 years of post-graduate surgical training in Baltimore and 1 year at Johns Hopkins Medical School in chest surgery.  Garlick would remain commander of the 3d through May 1945, virtually the entire existence of the unit. Capt. Paul Fernbach, Medical Corps, who had been with 3d since early 1944, assumed command.  The 3d Portable Surgical Hospital was inactivated in the Philippines on 11 December 1945.

Histories

The histories below were submitted by the 3d Portable Surgical Hospital from January 1943 through December 1945 in response to the requirements of the theater surgeon and The Surgeon General for all Army Medical units to prepare periodic reports on their medical activities.
Minor typographical errors have been corrected in the text of the reports.  Except for this the content is the reports are entirely as they were when they were originally submitted.  All histories are from U.S. Army records held in the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland.


September-December 1942
1 January-1 March 1943
1 March-30 June 1943
July-September 1943
October-December 1943
January-April 1944
April-June 1944
Task Force TORNADO
July-September 1944
Task Force CYCLONE
History to August 1944
October-December 1944
January-March 1945
Luzon 1945
April-June 1945
July-December 1945