ambulance-trains-bringing-first-world-war-home#war-comes-home

WAR COMES HOME

It was at railway stations that the British public got closest to the war. There they gathered to wave off sons, husbands and brothers who had joined the army—and went back to see them return on ambulance trains.

The unloading of an ambulance train is always a sad sight... They crawl along, moving very slowly. They are bowed and listless... These men left England fine, alert, young soldiers.
The Times (25 January 1915)

The first ambulance trains were greeted with crowds, red carpets, brass bands and local dignitaries. But pomp and pride were quickly replaced by sorrow as battered and broken men were unloaded onto the platforms.

Ambulance trains didn’t just bring the injured home to Britain—they also brought the horror of the conflict home to the public. As the number of terribly wounded men arriving in Britain grew, railway stations became a place for the public to help in any way they could.

[The] people... I felt... more sorry for were the Germans... when they got back to hospital... [t]hey wouldn’t have anyone to come and sympathise with them.

Alfred Pope Russell, orderly

Railways played an essential part in the first truly industrialised war. As well as facilitating the horrors of mass conflict, they also enabled medical care of injured service personnel on a vast scale.

Evacuation of the wounded on this scale would have been unimaginable without the ambulance trains that ferried thousands of soldiers away from the front line towards safety.

The end of the First World War didn’t signal the end of ambulance trains—they were used during the Second World War and subsequent conflicts, right up to the end of the Cold War.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT RAILWAYS AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

National Railway Museum blog, Ambulance trains
BBC iWonder, How WWI changed military medicine
Network Rail, WWI and the railway
The National Archives, Railways and the mobilisation for war in 1914
Imperial War Museum, Transport and supply during the First World War
British Library, Wounding and medicine in the First World War
BBC Two, Railwaymen in front-line warfare

VISIT THE EXHIBITION

Step on board and find out more about life on a hospital on wheels in our exhibition Ambulance Trains.