"AWI MASH Unit" Topic

What would an AWI field hospital have looked like?
Does anyone know of any illustrations of what it may have looked like?

I've decide to build a small scene depicting a place where wounded were cared for.
I'm guessing that large homes and meeting places would have served as hospitals. But the walking wound must have had a place to get patched up near the battle field.

Any suggestions?

Use the Eureka AWI "gun crew in civilian clothes/Molly Pitcher vignette" to carry a wounded man in a blanket suspended between two muskets balanced on their shoulders.

Quaker meeting houses were quite popular, as they were simple open structures with lots of benches/pews and folk willing to help alleviate suffering.

I remember speaking with the Medical Doctor / Re-enactor at the Yorktown Battlefield Visitor Center some years back. He had a small tent set up, a field table, lamps for illumination, plenty of water available, small trunks and valises for his medical instruments and supplies.

I'd recommend a small field tent, a wagon or two-wheeled cart, rather than a building -- just to keep the vignette simple.

Maybe watch the movie "Drums Along the Mohawk" for inspiration -- a touching scene following the allegorical Battle or Oriskany with a wounded Henry Fonda and the death of General Herkimer.

A very bloody tent

Look up D. Gallon's art called the Hoskins House. Part of it shows wounded being cared for near the battle.

Hope this link works to see it. link

I have been entertaining myself with making "casualty stations" for my Napoleonic collection (still horse and musket era as is the AWI) and have so far created two rather different vignettes.
One is of a 'clean-up' operation: link
and the other rather early in the treatment of the wounded:
link

You might find inspiration in one. The eighteenth century is rather still early in the proper treatment of the wounded and would have little sense of forethought in its organization. An open field with perhaps a tent would the best that would be expected.

I will try to add images from the above links:

link

and…

link

Somewhat anachronistic, but possibly inspirational:

link

Rather famous painting of the battle of Germantown with a wagon removing a wounded officer.

link

Note that wagons would have been rather ad hoc for removing casualties. Houses, barns and churches were used to gather and treat them (not unlike the ACW period). I believe each regiment carried a surgeon and assistant on the rolls.

The wagon is full of wounded, but the officer I think you are referring to (Lt Richard St George Mansergh-St George, 52nd Foot) is being carried by off by a Corporal Peacock in the left foreground (the Perry range has that figure!). He was later transferred to a wagon – possibly the one in the painting – and he executed a watercolour of a grenadier officer from the 4th Foot (his former regiment) greeting him as the wagon entered Philadelphia.

Given the chronic shortage of wagons and horses (at least till the retreat in 1778), I have to wonder how many wagons were available for removing wounded.