This 1944 U.S. Navy film (MN-3726G) shows how medical stations are set up on Saipan and how wounded are evacuated from the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands. It was shot in part by cameraman Edwin C. Udey, from whom we have other films in our collection. The film opens with naval guns firing at Saipan and planes flying overhead as U.S. forces prepare to invade the island. Soldiers climb into transport ships and move to shore (01:02). Landing craft hit the beach; men and tanks start pushing inland. A medical company starts treating casualties on the beach (02:10). Soldiers fire machine guns, and tanks drive inland. Several men carry out injured soldiers on stretchers. A jeep drives a wounded man to a battalion aid station (02:52). Medics dress a wound on a soldier’s back. Wounded men are evacuated on trucks to the regimental aid station (03:52). Footage shows the station still functioning despite having just been shelled. Men dig trenches and lay out medical supplies at a battalion aid station close to the fighting (04:55). At the collection station, two medics keep records of the wounded or killed (05:30). Medics give plasma to a wounded soldier (06:29). At the beach evacuation station, wounded men are loaded onto LVTs and taken out to a transport ship. A wounded Marine lieutenant asks about his men. An LVT heads out to the reef to meet a transport ship. The wounded are transferred from the LVT to the larger transport ship (08:43), which motors to the anchored hospital ship. Footage shows men wounded by mortar fragments being individually raised up to the deck from the transport boat (09:25). Inside the ship’s emergency room (10:05), medical officers treat the wounded soldiers. Troops move supplies to shore, including cans of gasoline and medical supplies. At a medical station, medics treat a wound on a man’s lower leg (12:27). A division hospital is up and running. The film shows a captured Japanese civilian hospital that has been repurposed into the division hospital (13:24). Here, wounded men receive plasma and blood. A man sprinkles penicillin onto the wound of a soldier (14:28). Surgeons operate on a wounded soldier. Marines drive a sprinkler truck around the hospital in an attempt to keep down the dust.
An officer looks for malaria on slides under a microscope. Jeeps continue to evacuate wounded men to the beach and onto the newly installed docks where transport ships now wait (16:44). A hospital boat carries the wounded to the hospital ship (18:05), where the men receive medical attention. An aircraft carrier is anchored near shore and is used as a makeshift hospital ship. Army C-47s on an airstrip are loaded with wounded men (18:58); the planes then take off for Honolulu. Evacuees are also carried into Anchored PB2Y Coronado seaplanes. Wounded men lay on cots on the deck of the hospital ship (20:13). The film shows the medical doctors and nurses on board who tend to the wounded men. Wounded men sit on deck, reading books or eating ice cream. A wounded man pushes a fellow injured soldier in a wheel chair on deck of the ship, concluding the film.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
