Joseph Milton Hand |
Joseph Hand, 2003. | World War II, 1939-1946; Korean War, 1950-1955
Army
81st Station Hospital
North Africa; Italy; United States; also: Korea
Lieutenant Colonel
Atlanta, GA
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For soldiers like Joseph Hand, working in medicine meant building and equipping station hospitals, sometimes from scratch. A station hospital was where a wounded soldier might recover enough to return to the front or move on to a general hospital for further care. Hands first hospital, a 500-bed facility in North Africa, took three months to erect and outfit. As American forces moved into Sicily and then up the boot of Italy, Hand kept building hospitalsor taking over existing buildings like an agriculture school in Naples. He joined the reserves after World War II and got called up for the Korean War. In Korea he faced a different kind of challenge: dishonest civilians stealing from the hospital he was managing.
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