Dr. Ivan Brown, Jr. was Captain of the 65th General Hospital's Neurological Service, which performed near-miraculous work restoring disfiguring head injuries. Brown was also in charge of the shock ward, where battle casualties were received, triaged, and prepared for surgery. He established the unit’s blood bank, one of the first among American hospitals in the European Theater. After the war, Brown took the expertise he gained while with the 65th back to Duke, where he played an important role in some of the institution's major innovations, such as starting the hospital's first blood bank and helping establish the first hyperbaric chamber. With Dr. Will Camp Sealy, Brown designed the heat exchanger that later became essential to cardiopulmonary bypass surgery.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, Photograph Collection, Box 2

This 1962 issue of the Intercom, the Medical Center's newsletter, features an article about the hospital's blood bank. While with the 65th General Hospital, Dr. Ivan Brown, Jr. helped establish the unit's blood bank, and later used this expertise to help begin the first one at Duke.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, Publications Collection, Intercom, Box 1

65th General Hospital Chief of Neurosurgery Dr. William Bridgers (far right) describes some of the features of his original Bridgers Apparatus, which was used in conjunction with this table for operating on patients with head injuries. A 1936 graduate of Duke's School of Medicine, Bridgers traveled to London to learn from silversmiths how to manipulate large plates of metal. In one case, he constructed and attached an entire prosthetic forehead to the skull of a wounded B-17 pilot, sewing the scalp back in place to leave the patient looking almost the same as he had before the flak injury.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, Photograph Collection, Box 19

This clinical diagnosis codebook was created by two members of the 65th General Hospital. It sought to bridge the gap and save time converting between older, military nomenclature (required for recordkeeping) and modern terminology familiar to doctors. A number of other hospital units copied and used this book.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, 65th General Hospital Collection, Box 9

This article by Dr. Clarence Gardner, Jr., the 65th General Hospital's Chief of Surgical Service, describes the hospital's treatment of air force battle casualties. An original member of the faculty, Gardner joined Duke as a Professor of Surgery in 1930 and later served as Chair of the department from 1960 to 1964.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, 65th General Hospital Collection, Box 1

Dr. Clarence Gardner, Jr. served as the 65th General Hospital's Chief of Surgical Service. While with the 65th General Hospital, he helped develop a method for removing shell fragments from a patient's still-beating heart by probing the heart's chambers with his finger through a circular, purse-string suture.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, Photograph Collection, Box 6

President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 letter to the members of the 65th on the 40th anniversary, congratulating them on their “outstanding record overseas.”

Duke University Medical Center Archives, 65th General Hospital Collection, Box 1

In 2002, a memorial sculpture for the 65th General Hospital was erected on Duke's medical campus to commemorate the men and women of the unit. Located in front of Duke's Cancer Center and Clinic buildings, it features a wounded soldier on a stretcher as a nurse administers care and a doctor signals to a corpsman to bring supplies.

Duke University Medical Center Archives, Photograph Collection, Digital Images