Stretcher bearer

A stretcher-bearer is a person who carries a stretcher, generally with another person at its other end, especially in a war or emergency times when there is a very serious accident or a disaster. It signifies also volunteers or benevolent people who help carry a stretcher or sometimes a litter or a pram.

In case of military personnel, for example removing wounded or dead from a battlefield, right term is now combat medics. The wounded soldier had to wait until the stretcher-bearers arrived or simply the stretcher-bearers will find them.

This common noun appears between 1875 and 1880. It is largely used before and during the First World War.

The British English verb to stretcher means "to carry someone on a stretcher". It is always transitive ( + adverb/preposition).

A stretcher-bearer party, sometimes a stretcher party or company, is a group or a band of people temporarily or regularly associated which have to carry injured persons with stretchers. In army stretcher-bearers were kind of specific soldiers who work with military ambulances and medical services. A famous stretcher-bearer and ambulance driver during the First World War was the young Ernest Hemingway.

In the arts, painting, figure or figurine sculpture or photography, it is a common topic as well as the couple of stretcher-bearers or the stretcher-bearer alone.

The stretcher bearer is not only a carrier. Stretcher bearers were used in both the Boer and First World Wars

Martine Da Silva-Vion, Jacques Theureau, "Stretcherbearers Autonomy Coordination with Units" in Healthcare systems ergonomics and patient safety, human factor, a bridge between care and cure, Riccardo Tartaglia, Sabastiano Bagnara, Tommaso Bellandi, Sara Abolino (editors), Taylor & Francis, London, 2005, 546 pages, § page 185-196.

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