_Navy corpsmen tend a Marine who was shot in the back by enemy sniper
fire._]
Rarely had combat medical support been so thoughtfully prepared and
provided as at Iwo Jima. Beyond the crude aid stations, further toward
the rear, Navy and Army field hospitals arose. Some Marines would be
wounded, receive treatment in a field hospital tent, recuperate in a
bunker, and return to the lines--often to receive a second or third
wound. The more seriously wounded would be evacuated off the island,
either by direct air to Guam, or via one of several fully staffed
hospital ships which operated around the clock within the amphibious
objective area. Within the first month of the fighting on Iwo Jima,
13,737 wounded Marines and corpsmen were evacuated by hospital ship,
another 2,449 by airlift.
[Illustration: _Installed in an abandoned Japanese dugout several
thousand yards behind the fighting, 4th Marine Division surgeons
operated on those badly wounded Marines and Navy corpsmen who might not
have survived a trip to the hospital ship._
Department of Defense Photo (USMC) 111506
]
For a wounded Marine, the hazardous period came during the first few
minutes after he went down. Japanese snipers had no compunctions about
picking off litter crews, or corpsmen, or sometimes the wounded man
himself as his buddies tried to slide him clear of the fire. One of
the most celebrated examples of casualty evacuation occurred after a
Japanese sniper shot Corporal Edwin J. Canter, a rocket truck crew
chief in the 4th Marine Division, through the abdomen. The rocket
trucks always drew an angry fusillade of counterbattery fire from the
Japanese, and Canter’s friends knew they had to get him away from the
launch site fast. As a nearby motion picture crew recorded the drama,
four Marines hustling Canter down a muddy hillside heard the scream of
an incoming shell, dumped the wounded man unceremoniously and scattered
for cover. The explosion killed the film crew and wounded each of the
Marines, including Canter, again. The film footage survived, appeared
in stateside newsreels--and eventually became part of the movie “Sands
of Iwo Jima.” Canter was evacuated to a hospital ship, thence to
hospitals in Guam, Hawaii, and the States. His war had ended.
[Illustration: