One thing about World War II I often wondered about was the transporting of injured troops back to the United States.
The photo above shows the first American casualties from the Battle of Normandy arriving in the Eastern U.S. on 29 June 1944, after a 19-hour plane trip from the British Isles. The wounded—a U.S. Army officer, 12 enlisted men and one U.S. Navy Seabee—were flown across the Atlantic to their homeland on a C-54 transport plane. Waiting ambulances carried them to hospitals. Several men were part of the first Allied assault wave to strike the northern French beaches with overwhelming force on 6 June. One was a paratrooper who broke his leg when he hit the ground behind German lines in the successful Allied thrust to cut off the German forces in Cherbourg, the strategic deep-water French port liberated on 26 June 1944.
Above is a photograph of ambulances backing up to a specifically designed ramp to transfer wounded men. That ramp guaranteed minimal discomfort for the wounded as they boarded the Air Transport Command C-54 Skymaster. The ramp would quickly move aside as the plane was warming up. Once loaded, it taxied down the field for take off for the flight across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States.
An American Red Cross aid distributes books and magazines for wounded American soldiers before boarding the C-54. The photo shows the Skymaster hospital plane at an Air Transport Command base in the United Kingdom. The soldiers were flown to a U.S. military airport and then to hospitals near their homes.
Above is a photo of a wounded soldier on a stretcher on the gangplank of an Allied landing craft which had brought military supplies and men for the fighting fronts in France. The wounded were brought to the beaches in ambulances and jeeps and transferred to ships for transportation to hospitals in England. More seriously injured were flown back in hospital planes.
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History of Sorts 
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