From Gallipoli to Sicily: British medical arrangements in Palermo, 1915-1916

The course of First World War was characterised by the technological advancements brought about by industrial warfare, which led to a change in the proportion between injured and killed, with the former increasing over the latter. However, by the time the War began, the growing concern over the welfare of soldiers, in Great Britain, had already stressed the importance of an efficient system for dealing with casualties and sanitation issues. This resulted in the reorganisation of medical services and the improvement in the training of military medical personnel (Harrison 2010, 1-15). Although pre-war medical plans did not prove to be adequate at the beginning, further developments in medical arrangements eventually showed their worth in France and Belgium. This was not the case on the Eastern Front, at least until the Western-Front-chain-of-evacuation-model was introduced (Cohen 2014, 41-42, 68). In fact, during the Gallipoli Campaign, medical arrangements were repeatedly modified in order to fit the circumstances (Tyquin 2012, 98), owing to the extraordinary nature of this operation. Moreover, the need to dispose of a huge number of casualties and to fit and train the convalescent soldiers, called for an expansion of resources in the Mediterranean theatre, which could also prevent the massive inflow of wounded and sick soldiers to England (Butler 1938, 374). The purpose of this article is to introduce readers toward a relatively unknown reality of the Great War through which the British authorities came to the decision for using Sicily as a base for convalescence for Gallipoli soldiers. The references used are based on military-regimental and hospital gazettes, newspapers, monographs and diplomatic memoirs.