The medic’s trauma book

From the Legion Magazine.

The medic’s trauma book

“They cannot knock on your house door, take you by the hand and
bring you to the clinic. If you don’t ask for help, nobody will come.”

Story and photography by Stephen J. Thorne
As a member of 5 Field Ambulance in Afghanistan, medic Macha Khoudja-Poirier treated so many patients with such a variety of ills and injures, she didn’t know what more she could see to fill out her “trauma book.”

Better known in English as a casualty book, the journal is a log of the cases a medic handles, like the “life list” birders keep of the birds they see or the logbook a pilot maintains of the planes they fly and the hours spent airborne. Khoudja-Poirier’s book covered the gamut.

Canadians start the first trench raids

In the dead of night on Feb. 28, 1915, 100 men of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry sneaked out of their trenches near Ypres, Belgium, crossed no man’s land and destroyed 30 yards of German trenches.

It was the first trench raid of the First World War.

The raids became more and more frequent, evolving into a standard technique used by both sides in the stalemate of trench warfare. Raiders damaged enemy trenches, gained information on enemy fortifications and captured prisoners for interrogation.