Medical Arrangements

The field ambulances established ADSs for their respective brigade groups as they arrived in Italy, and 6 Field Ambulance at once set up an MDS in the museum building at Taranto. This enabled New Zealand patients to be held in Italy. Had any great number been admitted to British hospitals there was a danger that they would have been evacuated along the British medical chain to Sicily and North-West Africa. A small number of more seriously ill patients was evacuated to 70 British General Hospital near Taranto.

It was not long before there was a New Zealand general hospital established in Italy, for 3 General Hospital embarked at Tripoli on 28 October on HS Dorsetshire, disembarked at Bari on 31 October, and was open and receiving patients on 6 November. This was a remarkably speedy transfer and reopening.

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