Local History The 115th Field Hospital Unit of the U.S. Army


on Plaster Down by Roderick Martin


1924 Children Playing in a Stream, watercolour


The laboratory staff with Miss Harris in centre


In the twelve months leading up to the allied invasion of Europe in June 1944 the whole of the south of England became an armed camp with American servicemen everywhere. The 29th US Infantry Division commanded by General Charles H. Gerhardt were stationed on Whitchurch Down, and had their headquarters in the town at Abbotsfield House, now Abbotsfield Hall Nursing Home. They were part of V Corps, United States 1st Army under General Omar N. Bradley, and destined for the beaches of Normandy. Nearby on Plaster Down there was a large US military field hospital which played an important role when the allied forces started their push into mainland Europe.


The 115th Station Hospital was constituted on paper in July 1923 and allocated to the 7th Army Corps Area. It was re-designated as the 115th Field Hospital Unit in June 1929. The unit was not actively formed until September 1942 at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. The fledging unit consisted of one officer and twenty-three enlisted men. At Camp Atterbury it was joined by its commanding officer Lt. Col. Daniel J. Fourrier and its executive officer Lt. Col. Robert E. MacMahon. In early November 1942 the unit, consisting of only 36 officers and 47 enlisted men moved to Fort Devens in Massachusetts, but by the end of 1942 its numbers had grown to 41 officers and 296 enlisted men. In April 1943 the unit’s commander


received secret orders alerting the unit for transfer to Camp Shanks, New York which everyone knew was an embarkation camp for ship transportation overseas. The 115th


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Field Hospital was the first hospital unit to pass through Camp Shanks. Like all military personnel the men were intensively trained with day marches, obstacle courses and gas chamber exercises. The arrival of nurses at Camp Shanks would have been an exciting day for the men in the unit. It was recalled that they breezed (by G.I. trucks) one hot and dusty day, to be enrolled in Capt. Fisher’s post-grad course in ‘The Process of De- glamorization’. At the time of the unit’s departure from Camp Shanks it was up to its authorised strength of 120 officers and nurses, and a few more than its quota of 392 enlisted men. The unit could boast of exceptional medical talent, many of its members having previously worked in civilian practices. The geographical origins of the officers were from all over America. Most of its enlisted men came from New England and the Middle Atlantic States, while most of the nurses were from the


Mid-West and Middle Atlantic States. The unit embarked aboard the Santa


Elena, a requisitioned passenger cruise ship, and sailed from Staten Island on the 15th July 1943. The matter of the unit’s destination was clarified a day later when booklets were distributed to everyone on board telling them ‘about wartime England and how to get along with the British’. The ship joined a destroyer guarded convoy which zigzagged across the Atlantic and eleven days later arrived at Gourock (near Greenock on the Firth of Clyde). Here the unit disembarked on the 26th July 1943. Then in two groups they undertook the long train journey to Tavistock. The final part of their journey was by military lorries from the railway station to the Plaster Down camp located on ‘a windy and rainy moor area about three miles from Tavistock’. Imagine their shock on arriving at such a bleak and isolated location. To compound the misery of the nurses, many complained that their baggage had been plundered of belongings, such as nylon hosiery, before the unit boarded its train in Scotland. Fortunately a small advance party had preceded the rest of the unit, and after taking over this British-built camp from a U.S. army unit (which had been briefly stationed at the camp), they


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