This footage of West African troops receiving treatment at a field hospital near Tamandu is best viewed as a continuation of footage featured in JFU 114 (‘Evacuation of West African Casualties from Letmauk by Air and Road’), which was filmed on the same day approximately ten miles away near Letmauk. In the dope sheet for JFU 114, the cameraman Sergeant T.V. Brown outlined the situation that led to the arrival of these casualties at Tamandu.

Brown reported that in the jungle to the north east of Letmauk, two Brigades of the 82 West African Division had become ‘completely cut off from the rest of the division for two weeks’. After suffering ‘considerable casualties’ during this period, the two brigades linked up again with the Division, which was holding the village of Letmauk, on 25 March. On the following day, when these films were shot, the most serious of the 240 wounded Africans were flown to Akyab and Kyaukpyu. ‘The remainder were’, the dope sheet explained, ‘evacuated by jeep ambulances to Tamandu where they were transferred to a hospital ship’. These two films, while filmed in different locations by separate cameramen, thus illustrate the full journey and scale of this military operation (‘Dope Sheet for JFU 114’).

Mark Harrison, in his work on British military medicine during the War, emphasised the mobility of the medical units within Burma. In order to avoid bringing in general hospitals and moving large medical equipment across the region, it was decided to ‘evacuate all serious cases by air, and to carry CCSs [Casualty Clearing Stations] and MFTUs [Malaria Forward Treatment Units] as the only hospital units with the army’. ‘Flexibility was the order of the day’, Harrison suggested, ‘with medical centres being continually reconstituted’ (Harrison, 2004, 223). A reliance on air support was integral to this system, and was widely noted in contemporary reports. For example, The Times wrote in April 1945 that ‘air transport in Burma has been the means of saving the lives of many soldiers who would probably have died before they could reach hospital by surface transport’ (The Times, 27 April 27 1945, 5). What may have previously been a week-long journey, the paper suggested, could now be achieved in a couple of hours. Harrison further argued that the Allies’ superior medical arrangements and transport ensured that ‘the vast majority of Allied casualties recovered and were returned to duty quickly thanks to forward treatment, but the Japanese, whose medical services had fallen into disarray, died from “lack of medical care, exposure and exhaustion”’ (Harrison, 2004, 221).

Many reports from the period also suggested that the African troops were inherently healthier within the jungle conditions and less susceptible to malaria and disease. Lieutenant-General Sir William Slim decided that the first troops to enter the Kabaw Valley should be the East African Division, ‘because he assumed they were more resistant to malaria than either Indian or British troops’ (Harrison, 2004, 221). Newspapers endorsed this argument. For example, The Times argued that the ‘West Africans have an instinct for it [jungle warfare] that can never be learned, and they should be far less prone to malaria than British or Indian troops, or indeed the Japanese themselves’ (The Times, 14 January 1944, 3). Yet, other reports emphasised the medical attention and welfare work provided for the African troops. In a study published in African Affairs in 1945, E. E. Sabben-Clare commented on ‘the fine work done by those who helped to keep the African soldier well’. Their health ‘cannot simply be put down to comparative African malarial immunity. It is’, he argued, ‘also due largely to the work of medical welfare and sanitary staff and, indeed of all those who helped to see that the African soldier was better fed and cared for than ever before’ (African Affairs, October 1945, 154- 155).