Do The Best For Our Soldiers: University of California Medical Service in World War I

Base Hospital No. 30 was staffed predominantly by UCSF doctors, nurses, and dentists. The hospital had a bed capacity of 2,400 and occupied sixteen hotels and a garage in Royat, a small health and watering resort town situated in the Auvergne Mountains of south central France. Seventeen trains carrying a total of 4,827 wounded soldiers arrived in Royat between June 12, 1918 and November 13, 1918. The hospital remained in operation until January 20, 1919. In total, 7,562 cases—2,415 surgical and 5,147 medical—were treated at Base Hospital No. 30.

The first trainload of patients arrived on June 12, 1918. It contained 359 patients: half British and half American.

Two-thirds of the train’s patients went to the surgical ward. The remaining patients were isolated and received special nursing for pneumonia, mumps, diphtheria, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and spinal meningitis.

The second train arrived on June 18, 1918. It contained 461 patients, mostly Marines, from the Château-Thierry fight. Many had been exposed to mustard gas. World War I saw the first large scale use of chemical weapons.

"The train commander stated that this was the worst trainload he had ever seen. There were dozens of cases of terrible skin, lung and eye poisoning from mustard gas, and the staff worked night and day trying to keep up with the work of dressing the enormous burns." – Diary of Lt. Colonel Eugene S. Kilgore, commanding officer of Base Hospital No. 30