WWI Photograph Album,100+ Photos, Papers US Lt. Weston, Sanitary Corps in France

Description

WWI Photograph Album,100+ Photos, Papers of US 1st. Lt. Weston, Sanitary Corps
Stationed in France
This photo album, compiled by 1st Lt. George K. Weston, of the US Sanitary Corps, stationed in France in World War I from August 2017, contains over 100 photographs, special orders, travel tickets, post cards, brochures and certificates.  The binding on the album is broken and pages are loose.  The pages are dry and brittle and parts of some of the photos are missing.  The book with all contents measures approximately 10 1/2" x 14 1/2" x 2 1/2" and weighs approximately 6 pounds.
The photographs vary in size from 3" x 4" up to 8 1/2" x 11 3/4".  Many of the photographs are annotated.  Items span from an appointment certificate in July 1917 to an honorable discharge January 30, 1919 and travel authorization to Paris.  Additional items include a passenger list and brochure from the SS Rochambeau that transported Lt. Weston to France.  There are transportation authorizations and orders including train tickets.  There are several large photos taken in Damascus including photos related to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief.  There are dinner invitations and menus as well as a program brochure for a minstrel show at the US Army Lakeside Base Hospital.  (The LAKESIDE UNIT, WORLD WAR I, formally designated U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 4, was the first contingent of the American expeditionary forces to be transported to Europe after the U.S. entry into World War I. Based in a British army hospital near Rouen, France, it provided medical care for Allied troops from the spring of 1917 to the winter of 1918-19.)
THE SANITARY CORPS
Upon assuming office in January 1914, Surgeon General William C. Gorgas initiated planning for what he believed would be the eventual U.S. participation in the war. His experiences in Cuba and Panama led him to support the establishment of a corps to provide the administrative and scientific specialists necessary for the military medical team. By spring 1916 Gorgas regularly testified before Congress, interspersing his testimony with excerpts from the proceedings of the French Chamber of Deputies on military medical lessons the French had learned. He noted the difficulty created by an insufficient number of military physicians and the burdening of that group with administrative responsibilities "which hamper and delay them in the performance of their regular tasks."
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Gorgas described steps the French had taken to remove those responsibilities from military physicians, to the extent that in the first year of the war the French medical department had nearly twenty-five hundred administrative officers and twenty-five hundred apothecaries.
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Establishment of such a corps in the U.S. Army had to wait until entry of the United States into the war. Then General Gorgas' ability to put together an expanded medical support team for the Army was greatly advanced by War Department General Orders No. 80, 30 June 1917, which created an important precursor of the Medical Service Corps. Called the Sanitary Corps "for want of a better name,"
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the organization enrolled newly commissioned officers with "special skills in sanitation, sanitary engineering, in bacteriology, or other sciences related to sanitation and preventive medicine, or who possess other knowledge of special advantage to the Medical Department."
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The officer strength was set at a maximum of 1 per 1,000 total Army active duty strength, and the grades were initially capped at major. The order also provided for 3,905 enlisted personnel in grades from private to hospital sergeant.
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Just as the USAAS provided the Medical Department with nonphysician commissioned specialists for the benefit of the French and Italian armies, the Sanitary Corps did the same for the U.S. Army. This corps gave the department the capability to capitalize on new technology in a rich diversity of units with missions ranging from surgical instrument repair to cinematography. Maj. Gen. Merritte W. Ireland, Gorgas' successor as surgeon general, wrote that the corps "assisted notably" in the Medical Department's wartime performance.
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In fact, the principal Medical Department wartime accomplishments cited in an account authorized by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker were those made possible by Sanitary Corps officers.
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