Skilled and Resolute

A History of the

12th Evacuation Hospital 

and the

212th MASH

1917–2006

Skilled and Resolute

A History of the 12th Evacuation Hospital 

and the 212th MASH, 1917–2006

Sanders Marble

Borden Institute

US Army Medical Department Center & School

Fort Sam Houston, Texas

Office of The Surgeon General

United States Army

Falls Church, Virginia

2013
Borden Institute

Daniel E. Banks, MD, MS, MACP

LTC MC US

Director and Editor in Chief

The opinions or assertions contained herein are the personal views of the 

authors and are not to be construed as doctrine of the Department of the Army 

or the Department of Defense.

Use of trade or brand names in this publication does not imply endorsement by 

the Department of Defense.

CERTAIN PARTS OF THIS PUBLICATION PERTAIN TO COPYRIGHT 

RESTRICTIONS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NO COPYRIGHTED PARTS OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED OR 

TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR 

MECHANICAL (INCLUDING PHOTOCOPY, RECORDING, OR ANY INFORMATION 

STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM), WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING 

FROM THE PUBLISHER OR COPYRIGHT OWNER.

Published by the Office of The Surgeon General

Borden Institute

US Army Medical Department Center & School

Fort Sam Houston, Texas

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marble, Sanders.

 Skilled and resolute : a history of the 12th Evacuation Hospital and the 212th MASH, 

1917-2006 / Sanders Marble.

 pages cm

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 1. United States. Army. Evacuation Hospital, 12th--History. 2. United States. Army. 

Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, 212th--History. 3. Military hospitals--United States-

-History. I. Title. II. Title: History of the 12th Evacuation Hospital and the 212th 

MASH, 1917-2006.

 UH473.M37 2013

 355.7’2--dc23

 2013042564

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Foreword vii

Preface ix

Chapter One

World War I 1

Chapter Two

World War II 17

Chapter Three

The Vietnam War 47

Chapter Four

Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm 91

Chapter Five

The 1990s: Trouble in the Balkans 117

Chapter Six

Operation Iraqi Freedom 155

Chapter Seven

Last Days of the MASH 211

Appendix: Oral Histories 241

Abbreviations and Acronyms xi

Index xiii

Foreword 

Few Army units are more effective in building the confidence and trust of the 

Soldier than the forward deployed medical team. The passage of time shows 

that a continual reduction in fatalities and debilitating injuries occurs when our 

Wounded reach medical and surgical care as soon as possible. That is a key 

message in this recounting of the history of the 12th Evacuation Hospital, 212th 

Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and 212th Combat Support Hospital and their 

10 decades of service to Service Members, Coalition Forces, and the Nation. 

Throughout Army Medicine’s history our experiences have strengthened our 

capacity and our resolve as a healthcare organization. We are America’s most 

trusted premier medical team, and our successful mission accomplishment is 

testimony to the phenomenal resilience, dedication, and innovative spirit of 

Army Medicine’s Soldier Medics and Civilians. 

Sanders Marble, Senior Historian with the AMEDD Center of History and 

Heritage, has insightfully detailed their story in Skilled and Resolute: A History of the 12th Evacuation Hospital and 212th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. 

Dr. Marble has created a history that is much like that of other histories in the 

Army—individual valor and unit glory. Similar histories do not, however, make 

identical histories, and the 12th—the oldest deployable medical treatment facility—owns a special place in the annals of Army Medicine. Time has marched 

on for military medicine, a second key message in this book. Today’s battlefield 

and medical support on the battlefield are vastly improved from early wars of the 

Twentieth Century. Technology, force structure, and doctrine have changed, as 

has the composition and attitudes of the American public and the Army. 

This book is more than a narrative of what one distinguished unit accomplished. These pages are filled with personal insights on how individuals overcame hardship and circumstances to provide the best care possible at the time. 

This book will make you think about how our healthcare team was brought 

together and how it sustained its effectiveness during varied and prolonged operations. 
The focus for the Army Medical Department is to support and sustain the 

Army, enhance the care experience, and innovate Army Medicine. Overarching 

all of these efforts is the priority that Army Medicine is shifting in focus from 

healthcare to health. I thank Dr. Marble for providing us with the history of our 

oldest deployable hospital, giving us insights on how the specifics have changed 

but how the purpose of Army Medicine remains unchanged. 

Serving to Heal . . . Honored to Serve. 

Patricia D. Horoho

Lieutenant General, US Army

The Surgeon General and

 Commanding General,

US Army Medical Command 
Preface

This book is essentially a biography of a military unit. It chronicles the history 

of the 12th Evacuation Hospital and its successor, the 212th MASH, through 

90 years, and attempts to explain events, circumstances, and changes. Trauma 

care and medicine have changed dramatically over this period. The Army has 

changed in profound ways. The Army’s deployable hospitals have changed as 

a result of both, including the creation, development, and demise of the Mobile 

Army Surgical Hospital. The 212th became the “last MASH standing”; the final 

chapter in the book explores how the MASH concept worked in its last combat 

deployment, the Iraqi desert. 

It has not been possible to interview anyone from the 12th Evac who served in 

World War I or World War II, and I have had to write those portions of the book 

from documents. For more recent periods I have benefited from interviews with 

members of the unit and heard more about what life was like. For those who 

served in the unit during the world wars, unfortunately, we do not have their own 

voices describing the long hours, the jokes that were told, the details of the mess 

hall or bunks. When I write about setting up the hospital, the reader will have 

to imagine about 350 people moving around, hammering in tent stakes, sweating as they lift crates out of trucks, swearing as a hammer gets dropped on their 

foot. When I describe the hospital as busy, I gloss over the continuous work—by 

nurses and medics on the wards, in the kitchen, in the lab, by the x-ray technicians and litter-bearers moving patients around—and of course the work of the 

physicians, without whom there would be no hospital. But there would not be a 

hospital either without the electricians, the administrators, the soldiers on guard 

duty, and of course a commanding officer.

To make this account more readable, I have not used footnotes or other references to the various official documents and books from which I have drawn the 

story of the 12th Evac, the 212th MASH, the Army of which they were a part, 

and the wars in which they participated. The files I used are available in the 

historical reference collection of the Army Medical Department Center of His-
tory and Heritage, US Army Medical Command, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. In 

presenting interviews, I have made the soldiers’ comments more readable while 

preserving their meaning as much as possible. Original transcripts are on file in 

the Office of Medical History. Where comments in an interview extract are in 

brackets, they are mine; parentheses are my explanations of official terminology 

or efforts to replicate a parenthetical comment in an interview. All ranks are 

given as they were at the time in question.

Many people have contributed their knowledge, experience, and expertise to 

this book. Interviews of the 212th during Operation Iraqi Freedom were largely 

done by Mr William Addison; Major Lewis L Barger, III; Dr John Greenwood; 

Major Jennifer Petersen; and Lieutenant Colonel Judith Robinson. Major Barger 

also conducted many of the interviews related to the Pakistan deployment. Many 

have reviewed the manuscript at various stages, especially Dr Greenwood and 

most of my colleagues at the Office of Medical History, contributing different 

perspectives to make a whole. They kept me from many errors, and those that remain are mine. I have contacted as many of the commanding officers as I could, 

especially those who served during deployments, and I owe them thanks for 

reviewing and fact-checking what I have written. Three directors of the Borden 

Institute saw merit in this manuscript and kept it alive: Colonel Dave Lounsbury, 

Colonel Martha Lenhart, and Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Banks. The team at the 

Borden Institute took a tightly focused manuscript and got me to tell the broader 

story, then fixed the technical errors that remained.

I am conscious that while my name appears on the cover, this is not just my 

book. All these people contributed to it, but it is still not our book: it is the story 

of the men and women who have served their nation and their fellow soldiers in 

the 12th Evacuation Hospital and the 212th MASH. 

Dr Sanders Marble

Office of Medical History 

US Army Medical Department 

Center of History and Heritage