"Our doctors were operating 36 hours at a time." (Video Interview, Part 2, 13:05)

Joseph Milton Hand

Joseph Hand, 2003. War: World War II, 1939-1946; Korean War, 1950-1955 Branch: Army Unit: 81st Station Hospital Service Location: North Africa; Italy; United States; also: Korea Rank: Lieutenant Colonel Place of Birth: Atlanta, GA

For soldiers like Joseph Hand, working in medicine meant building and equipping station hospitals, sometimes from scratch. A station hospital was where a wounded soldier might recover enough to return to the front or move on to a general hospital for further care. Hand’s first hospital, a 500-bed facility in North Africa, took three months to erect and outfit. As American forces moved into Sicily and then up the boot of Italy, Hand kept building hospitals—or taking over existing buildings like an agriculture school in Naples. He joined the reserves after World War II and got called up for the Korean War. In Korea he faced a different kind of challenge: dishonest civilians stealing from the hospital he was managing.