The 224th (Parachute) Field Ambulance was a Royal Army Medical Corps unit of the British airborne forces during the Second World War.

They were then withdrawn back to England only to return to the continent at the end of the year in response to the German surprise winter offensive in the Ardennes forest.

After the war the 224th remained with the 6th Airborne Division, and following a brief period in England were sent to Mandate Palestine on an internal security role.

Impressed by the success of German airborne operations, during the Battle of France, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed the War Office to investigate the possibility of creating a corps of 5,000 parachute troops.

[6] The war establishment of a parachute field ambulance was 177 all ranks,[7] consisting of thirteen doctors in two surgical teams and four sections.

[10] Other medical staff were a sergeant sanitary assistant, a masseur, a dental orderly and five stretcher bearers, one of whom was trained as a shoemaker.

[10] The rest of the headquarters consisted of a quartermaster, clerks, cooks, storemen, an Army Physical Training Corps instructor, a barber and a joiner from the Royal Engineers.

[13] It was normal to have at least two RASC drivers with two jeeps and a trailer attached to each section, the remaining men and vehicles stayed with the headquarters surgical teams.

The brigade had to capture two bridges crossing the Caen canal and the River Orne and hold them until relieved by forces advancing from the British Sword beach.

The commanding officer and sixty-five men who were to establish the Main Dressing Station (MDS) travelled in the same aircraft as brigade headquarters,[19] while Nos 1, 2 and 3 Sections were attached to the 1st Canadian, 8th and 9th parachute battalions.

[19] The members of the 224th who landed on the correct drop zone proceeded to set up their Main Dressing Station in a farm at Le Mesnil.

[19] By noon, around two-thirds of the 22nd were still missing, but the MDS had managed to treat fifty-five wounded and conduct ten surgical operations.

[23] Over the next few days, the front line was very fluid and it was not unknown for the unit's ambulances returning to the MDS from battalion aid posts to drive through German patrols and positions.

[23] Being co-located with brigade headquarters, the MDS could not be given the protection of the Red Cross and was subjected to small arms and artillery fire.

[23] On 18 June during a German artillery attack, all the unit's transport, apart from one ambulance jeep and two captured trucks, were destroyed.

On 7 August, they moved closer to the front at Riverbella[26] when the 6th Airborne Division was ordered to cross the River Dives and advance north along the French coast.

On 22 September 1946, Thomas Mcinnes of Liverpool aged 20 a junior NCO from the 224th was one of the forty men from the division killed in Palestine.