Mobile Army Surgical Hospital
[3] The necessity for the U.S. Army to have more convenient treatment centers was shown by the long logistics of the stretched out supply lines during World War II.
[3] In the early 1940s, Colonel Michael DeBakey and his colleague were selected to give recommendations on how to provide surgical care for the U.S.
Col. Harry A. Ferguson, the executive officer of the Tokyo Army Hospital, also aided in the establishment of the MASH program.
This proved to be highly successful; during the Korean War, a seriously wounded soldier who made it to a MASH unit alive had a greater than 97% chance of survival once he received treatment.
[8] With mountainous terrain in Korea, this was crucial as ground transport could compromise the patients lives and would take longer to arrive to MASH units.
[10] Although this clearly showed progress in the medical field, the type of warfare changed making MASH obsolete in many cases.
[10] During the Gulf War, in September 1990, the main body of the 5th MASH, 44th Medical Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Liberty, North Carolina, deployed to King Abdul-Aziz Air Base, Royal Saudi Air Force, Daharan Saudi Arabia and was the first fully functional Army hospital in the country.
In February 1991, the 5th MASH was operationally attached to the 24th Infantry Division to provide forward surgical care (often right on the front battle lines) to the combat units that attacked the western flank of the Iraqi army.
[11] The 212th MASH – based in Miesau Ammo Depot, Germany – was deployed to Iraq in 2003, supporting coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
[citation needed] Internationally, the last MASH unit in the U.S. Army was converted to a Combat Support Hospital on October 16, 2006.
[12] The 212th MASH's unit sign now resides at the Army Medical Department's Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
In addition, one of the last MASH units worldwide was located in Pakistan serving as a civilian hospital to aid in recovery efforts following an earthquake in 2006.
[13] New transportation vehicles such as the Bell H-13 (known as the first evac helicopter) and later the Sikorsky UH-60 made airmobile and other ground units ineffective in desert and tropical terrain.
High casualties in the front line called for onsite paramedic care, such as ambulances and medical tents.
Having learned from World War II that transporting wounded soldiers to rear hospitals was highly inefficient in reducing mortality rate, MASH units were established near front lines to supply mobile and flexible military medical care.
[15][16] MASH units played an important role in the development of the triage system, a technique that underscores emergency room (ER) medicine in hospitals today.
While the concept of triage had been used years before the Korean War, it wasn't until MASH units put it into real practice that the idea was fully developed.
