Alabama men visit WWI battlefields where grandfather performed surgery
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
WALTER BRYANT
Birmingham News staff writer
Visiting World War I battlefields where his grandfather was an Army surgeon put stories of combat zone medical care in perspective for a Hoover resident and his son.
Capt. Gilbert Douglas served with the 79th Infantry Division during World War I and later shared his recollections with his grandson, Jefferson County Constable Gilbert Douglas III.
A few months ago, when Constable Douglas' son, John, informed him that one of his history teachers at Virginia Military Institute was leading a tour of European battlefields, he realized it was an opportunity to revisit family history.
Twenty students from VMI saw the trip primarily as a chance to visit some of the sites they had studied in their history class. Constable Douglas accompanied the students.
The younger Douglas, who will report for Marine Officer Candidate School in July, was impressed to find battlefields from both wars still scarred from World War I and World War II.
"You could go for miles and still see shell holes," John Douglas said.
Constable Douglas had heard his grandfather's stories of serving in aid stations several hundred yards to the rear of front lines, practicing medicine as best he could in a combat zone.
"He wasn't actually being shot at, but he used to tell me how enemy shells would blow out candles while he was performing surgery," Gilbert Douglas said.
Apparently the stress of prolonged combat led some soldiers to deliberately wound themselves.
"Granddad said he sometimes had to treat soldiers who had shot off a finger," the constable said.
Upon returning to Birmingham, Capt. Douglas began a private practice. He died at age 97 in 1985.
E-mail: wbryant@bhamnews.com
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