And there can be no doubt that the field ambulances of the Royal Army Medical Corps who, among their naval counterparts, fought to save life in the front line of the Falklands campaign were extremely efficient. All but three of the wounded who reached them survived. Some 318 operations were performed at the front, mostly in field hospitals where improvization had to be the order of the day. A frequency generator, for example, was used to releive pain by electro-acupuncture; and blood in plastic bags was warmed in an old baked bean tin.

But not everything was improvized. A carefully planned sleeping-drug regime allowed pilots to perform 100 hours flying in two weeks-twice the normal maximum-and tackle the 30 hour round trip to Ascension and back. Experience gained in prvious campaigns in the treatment of battle wounds led surgeons to dress them lightly, not closing them for five days, so that any dead flesh or infection missed first time could be tackled easily.

The RAMC traces in ancestery back to 1660 when surgeons were appointed to each regiment under an Inspector General of Hospitals. But it wasn't until the Crimean war, when the commissariat and hospital services all but broke down completely, that the present medical services began to take shape. The Medical Staff Corps was established in 1855, the Army Hospital Corps began providing orderlies in 1875 and the Army Medical School opened in 1860. In 1873 these became the Army Medical Department and regimental hospitals became garrison hospitals, but each regiment now had a Medical Officer. The Army Nursing service was founded in 1881 and finally, on 23 June 1898, the Royal Navy Medical Corps was established, just in time to see action in the Boer War.

The efforts of the corps in the two world wars were aimed as much against disease and infection as battle casualties. And during World War I alone, the RAMC itself lost 6873 officers and men.

In World War 2 the RAMC saw action in every theatre which British soldiers fought in and they went into the front line with them by landing craft and parachute. The war also saw the introduction of blood transfusion and, from 1943 onwards, penicillin.

Today the RAMC along with Royal Army Dental Corp the QUARANC nurses provides the Army's medical service. In peacetime its medical personnel are mainly based on military hospitals. But in wartime they form front line units. Officers and men are combat proficient and trained in combat casualty evacuation using helicopters and tactical vehicles like the Samaritan armoured ambulance.