Ralph Greene was in the lab of the 228th Station Hospital processing some routine tests when he got the order to report immediately to the hospital’s recreation room. It was early in the afternoon of April 28, 1944, and for Greene, a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, the day had begun like every other for the past several months—handling sick call, checking on soldiers with such unmartial ailments as chicken pox and measles, tending to the victims of minor training mishaps. Ever since the previous September his hospital company had been operating its Quonset-hut facility in Sherborne, Dorset, not far from the southwestern corner of England. Everyone assumed the long-awaited invasion of France would take place soon; but while trucks brimming over with troops and supplies constantly passed by, squadrons of aircraft ranged overhead, and searchlight beams crisscrossed the sky every night, there was little for Greene and his fellow medics to do beyond housekeeping chores. Now, however, the adjutant on the phone had a distinct note of urgency in his voice: “Colonel Kendall wants all officers in the rec room at once!”

In minutes the unit’s forty medical officers and eighty nurses were assembled. Col. James Kendall, the Regular Army doctor who commanded the hospital, stood before them in an exaggeratedly military pose, a swagger stick tucked under his left elbow. But his tone was an odd mixture of pride and trepidation. “We’re in the war at last,” he announced. “In less than an hour, we’ll receive hundreds of emergency cases of shock due to immersion, compounded by explosion wounds. SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] demands that we treat these soldiers as though we’re veterinarians: you will ask no questions and take no histories. There will be no discussion. Follow standard procedures. Anyone who talks about these casualties, regardless of their severity, will be subject to courtmartial. No one will be allowed to leave our perimeter until further orders.”

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