Page 140 - JSOM Summer 2019

Ray Banta’s War

A Combat Surgeon in World War II China

Clark JE Jr. Ray Banta’s War: A Combat Surgeon in World War II China. Middletown, DE: CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform; 2015. ISBN-10: 1515171256 and ISBN-13: 978-1515171256. Paperback: 264 pages.
Review by COL (Ret) Warner “Rocky” D. Farr, MD, MPH

n late 1943, during World War II, a new US Army Medical and 25 enlisted men, including two surgical and 11 medical
Department unit design was developed and tested in China. technicians.
IThis newly conceived, very untried and untested US Army
medical unit was the portable surgical hospital (PSH). The What was dramatically different and marked a radical depar-
40th Portable Surgical Hospital filled a gap by providing sur- ture from the normal was that all the unit’s equipment, includ-
gical support and medical care for local indigenous troops of ing its medical and surgical supplies and rations, could weigh
American’s allies, in this case, the Nationalist Chinese Army. no more than what the 29 men could personally transport.
The aim of the 40th Portable Surgical Hospital was to pro- Assembled and trained in the midst of a war, these PSHs had
vide surgical support as close as possible to from many shortcomings. As the war pro-
the front lines of battle between the Imperial gressed into jungle fighting, shortages of per-
Japanese forces and the Nationalist Chinese sonnel and equipment became evident. The
armies. Its patients, mostly urgent surgi- most critical problem was the severe limita-
cal, were to be Nationalist Chinese soldiers. tion placed on the total weight to assure the
Largely seen through the eyes of its first com- unit’s portability. From the start, this meant
manding officer, Major Ray Banta, Medical that to stay portable, the unit had to give up
Corps, US Army, this book tells the untold equipment and supplies that would have been
story of American surgeons who overcame most useful for life in the field and to treat
extreme obstacles to care for their malnour- casualties.
ished and severely wounded Chinese allies.
This book is the story of the unit’s command-
PSHs were a type of field hospital. The Army ing officer and senior medical corps officer,
Medical Corps designed the unit to be carried Major Banta. It tells the story of his challenges
on the backs of the team staffing the hospi- in attempting to provide US-level surgical care
tal. Mobile Army surgical hospitals ultimately to Nationalist Chinese wounded close to the
replaced them. In 1942, the standard 25-bed battlefield. It is a story of ingenuity, making
army station hospital was changed into a new do, and constant challenges. In Banta’s words,
structure of a portable hospital of 25 beds. it was “a miniature Evacuation Hospital in a
The new unit was capable of supporting small units in its camp bastard sort of way.” It was also a very early attempt to meet
or garrison version (with the addition of four female Army the challenges of the then-unnamed “golden hour” of trauma
nurses and organic vehicles); alternately it was to support care. One of the surgeons stated, “I never opened the abdomen
battalion and regimental combat teams in a deployed com- of a Chinese soldier . . . in which I didn’t find ascaris [round-
bat task force version (without the four nurses and organic worm] infestation of the intestinal tract . . . one would have
vehicles). Commanded by a Medical Corps captain or major, to scoot the worms back out of the way to perform anastomo-
the new 29-man portable hospital had four medical officers sis.” As we struggle with the size and organization of forward
(three general surgeons and one general surgeon/anesthetist) surgical teams, this book becomes essential history.

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