What do they mean

• by Fingula

  What do they mean with:

  Casualties: 4 OR from Hospital Are they comming back from the hospital? Then why do they put casualties in front of it.
  Casualties: 2 OR to Hospital Sick. They say this a lot. Are all these men sick?

  Posted May 10, 2014 6:23 PM

• by Maria64

  Hi Fingula,

  I'm working on diaries from 6 Cavalry Field Ambulance and in my opinion, your example of ''4 OR from Hospital'' means they are returning from hospital.
  Since the new tags were introduced, both sick and wounded are included under the Casualties tag. I take this example to mean that for whatever reason, these 4 were unfit for duty, needed to go to hospital and have now returned.

  When they're being listed as coming back, it doesn't matter why they were in hospital when they return, as they'd probably already have been listed as casualties. It's more to say that 4 men are returning from hospital to their unit. They're mentioned for where they are now, maybe in connection with recording Unit Strength.

  ''Casualties: 2 OR to Hospital Sick.'' In this case, these men were sick and sent to hospital. There was a lot of sickness as well as wounding. I have had a few cases of measles, pneumonia and 1 case of meningitis come through my unit.
  Here, your examples only tell us that 2 of the men were sick and sent to hospital and we don't know why the other 4 had been in hospital just that they have returned.

  I hope this makes sense, hun.
  Best wishes,
  Maria.

  Posted May 11, 2014 9:10 AM

• by HeatherC moderator

  That sounds spot on to me.

  So if you have a line that says "2 sick to hospital, 4 ORs from hospital, 1 OR killed in action" you'd only actually enter the 2 sick and the 1 killed in the casualties box. You can't actually do anything with the information that 4 ORs have returned unless names are given for the individuals.

  Posted May 11, 2014 9:28 AM

• by Fingula

  Thank you. I was already doing that, but I wanted to make sure it was right.

  Posted May 12, 2014 10:22 AM