Battlefield medicine has been a feature of warfare since wars began, as attempts have always been made to save the lives of those wounded. However, infection and primitive methods of surgery or amputation often led to loss of life despite the best efforts.
In World War II, battlefield medicine improved considerably on most fronts. For one thing, surgical equipment and techniques were more sophisticated. For another, penicillin and streptomycin were used for the first time on a large scale to combat infection. Penicillin was available only to British and American troops, but inferior sulfa medicines were a pre-war German invention and battlefield medics and even some soldiers of both German and Allied armies carried packets of sulfanilamide and sulfathiazole to coat wounds in order to inhibit early infection. Another factor was that air evacuation of the wounded was available for the first time. The Germans also pioneered the use of metal plates to help heal fractures. Researchers have concluded that these developments led to a significant increase from World War I to World War II in the survival rate of wounded soldiers. Partially due to access to penicillin by Western Allies, American survival rates in the European Theater were higher than German survival rates.
Wounds due to artillery shells and bombs were the most common (in World War I, the most common wounds were from bullets and gas). For those who had lost limbs, prosthetics were frequently available. Crude prosthetics had been in use from the mid-19th century, but were often heavy and unwieldy. By the Second World War, lighter wooden prosthetic legs utilizing suction sockets rather than harnesses were available in Germany. If the extremities of a limb were lost or amputated, surgeons would frequently revise the amputation to make the limb better suited for such a prosthetic.
Sources
Richard Conniff, “Penicillin: Wonder Drug of World War II,” HistoryNet
Dave Vergun, “Medical Improvements Saved Many Lives during World War II,” DOD News, March 17, 2020David White and Daniel P. Murphy, “Battlefield Injuries and Medicine”