Home Guard Casualties
Medicine versus Invasion. -By G. B. Shirlaw and Clifford Troke. (Secker and Warburg. 7s. 6d.) IN this book the authors have depicted some Of the medical problems with which the Home Guard might be faced in the event of an invasion, and Dr. Shirlaw has been able to speak from experiences of tending the wounded in the often confused and guerrilla conditions of the Spanish civil war. These problems might easily include, especially in rural areas, the more or less prolonged isolation of Home Guard units by bodies of enemy parachutists, air-borne troops, or sea-borne raiders. And Home Guard medical officers—usually local general practitioners—might well find themselves, with wounded men on their hands, tem- porarily cut off from the nearest hospital or village first aid post, or Home Guard units might find themselves temporarily isolated from their medical officer.
As in all prospective Home Guard activities—particularly again in country districts—it would obviously be difficult, and might be dangerous, to lay down any exact rules of procedure. An infinite number of unforeseen situations would probably arise, and the maximum amount of freedom for local responsibility, initiative and resource must necessarily be left and should be expected. In the actual event, use would doubtless be made of the nearest available Civil Defence or A.R.P. first aid organisa- tion, whether in town or country, or of the R.A.M.C. personnel and equipment, if the exigencies of the invasion had brought them into the immediate' neighbourhood. The question of which would have to be decided on the spot, in the existing circum- stances, by the medical officer or •other Home Guard officers of the unit concerned.
From the practical preparatory point of view, however, as Dr. Shirlaw points out, a good deal can and should immediately be done. The local medical officer should know his particular terrain and mark down all possible suitable places for the collection and despatch of Wounded ' • and in this, as a writer in the Lancet has recently pointed out, the local district nurse, with her special knowledge, might be an invaluable collaborator. Apart from the stretcher-bearer parties; with which all the Home Guard are now, or should be, provided, every member should possess enough first aid knowledge to be able to put on a tour- niquet and improvise and apply a splint. Fflrther, conveniently situated supplies of first aid material should be in hand and distributed, and their whereabouts known in advance by every Home Guard officer. Dr. Shirlaw admits that his book is, in some respects, controversial ; and many will doubt the wisdom— even if it were practical politics—of a general issue of morphia, as he seems to suggest, to every member of the Home Guard. But this is a book that will abundantly repay reading by every doctor and officer associated with the Home Guard. It might well be a stimulus for useful rehearsals, and should be a very definite contribution to the efficiency of the Home Guard
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