59 14 15 16 17 18 The GreatWar keeping up morale, as the social contract between the soldier and the state included the compact that if the soldier was wounded that he would not be left to die unattended. That sometimes happened in the great battles where there were thousands of casualties in a short period, but generally the medical care was very good. For soldiers who made it off the battlefield – and the clearing of the wounded was always a great challenge through shellfire and over the cratered landscape – more than 90 percent survived if they were treated by a doctor. The Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) expanded rapidly to meet the needs of the Canadian Expeditionary Force that eventually consisted of more than 620,000 soldiers. From fewer than 20 prewar officers, the CAMC would grow to over 20,000 doctors, nurses, and other ranks. This rapid increase would see more than half of all Canadian doctors serve in uniform and a third of the country’s nurses. On and behind the battlefield, the medical practitioners encountered grisly wounds that were never seen in civilian practice. At the Battle of Second Ypres in April 1915, Lieutenant-Colonel Walter LangmuirWatt wrote in his diary about the carnage at his medical aid station. It was “one never -ending stream which lasted all day and night for seven days without cessation: in all some five thousand two hundred cases passed through our hands. Wounds here, wounds there, wounds everywhere. Legs, feet, hands missing; bleeding stumps controlled by rough field tourniquets, large portions of the abdominal walls shot away; faces horribly mutilated; bones shattered to pieces; holes that you could put your clenched fist into, filled with dirt and mud, bits of equipment and clothing, until it all
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