• LIFE

Behind the Picture: George Lott, Wounded Warrior

6 minute read

In January 1945, LIFE magazine published a groundbreaking story, featuring dozens of photographs by Ralph Morse, chronicling the journey of a badly wounded American medic named George Lott from a battlefield in northeastern France to a veterans’ hospital in the United States.

“George Lott is a name on a list of 663,859 names,” LIFE told its readers, more than three years after America’s entry into the Second World War. “These are the casualties of the U.S. armed forces. Of the total, 143,108 have been killed, 380,880 have been wounded, 77,931 are missing and 61,940 are prisoners. George Lott was wounded.”

On November 22, 1944, during a battle in northeastern France, Lott—a medic attached to a battalion aid station of the 137th Infantry Regiment in George Patton’s Third Army—was hit in both arms by fragments from a German mortar shell. Morse followed Lott, wrote LIFE, “on a 4,500-mile odyssey by ambulance, train and plane, through two more field dressing stations and five hospitals in France and England and home to the U.S.

“Morse’s pictures,” LIFE proclaimed, “document the great medical victory of the war. The case of George Lott shows why U.S. soldiers feel they get the best care men and medicine can administer and why more than 96 percent of those who reach hospitals survive the wounds of battle.”

Meet one of the most powerful men we never knew existed

Here, seven decades later, LIFE.com remembers George Lott—all the George Lotts, in all of America’s wars.

Through the most memorable photo Ralph Morse made in the last weeks of 1944 (slide #1), as well as other pictures that Morse shot while traveling with George Lott—many of which never ran in the magazine—we witness not only the grinding, monotonous, utterly necessary rehab Lott endured, but the vast machinery and the countless personnel put in motion to treat and transport a wounded warrior from the battlefield to safety and, ultimately, home.

For his part, Ralph Morse—now 97 years old—still vividly recalls the extraordinary circumstances that led to him being at Lott’s side from the very moment he was wounded to his arrival back in the U.S.

“I was with the Third Army in France when a cable arrived from my editors in New York,” Morse told LIFE.com. “They wanted me to cover a guy, they said, who was wounded bad enough that he had to go all the way home. They wanted me to find him and to follow him all the way home. I showed the cable to Patton—I had just done a cover story on him for LIFE, so I was friendly with him. I said, ‘General, look at this. They’re never even going to let me get in an ambulance with a wounded man! They’ll need that spot for another wounded guy.’

“Patton reads the cable and says, ‘Look, you tell the editors at LIFE to get in touch with the surgeon general of the United States Army, and get a set of orders with your name on them as a wounded man who has to get all the way back to the States. Get that, and send it to me.’ So LIFE went to Washington . . . and got the order. We were powerful then!

“Patton eventually received the order, made 30 or 40 copies, and sent them all through his lines. He told me, ‘If anyone stops you, just let me know and I’ll court-martial ’em.'”

Morse laughed at the memory. “You need a friend like that if you’re going to do these big stories that have never been done before.” Which, of course, is exactly what the 13-page feature in LIFE, “George Lott, Casualty,” was: a big story that had never been done before.

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“I was with Lott’s division in mid-November,” Morse (pictured at right during the war) remembered. “I showed one of the doctors my orders and he told me they’d look for a likely candidate. We’re pinned down by German mortar rounds, and they bring in a wounded soldier. The doctor looks at this young man’s wound and tells me, ‘This will only take him as far as London.’ But I need someone who’s going to be sent all the way home. The mortars let up a little and I head out with some of the medics, who went out to try and bring back some of the wounded. The mortars start pouring in again and we start running back to the barn that’s serving as a base and a hospital, and I hear Lott say, ‘Oh! I’ve been hit in both arms.’

“We got him back to the aid station, and he’s lying on the hay on the floor of the barn—and the doc looks at him and and then looks at me and says, ‘He’s your man.’ And that’s how the story started.”

LIFE followed up with Lott two years after he was wounded. He was still in a veterans’ hospital in 1947; the staff had long held out hope that he would eventually regain ability in both of his shattered arms. In the end, doctors determined that they would have to amputate his horribly damaged and virtually useless right arm. His left arm was saved.

Morse, meanwhile, says that the primary lesson he took away from the six weeks he spent with Lott—and, more specifically, from the first 20 minutes after Lott was wounded — is that, occasionally, something useful can come from the awful destruction and misery of war.

“In any war we learn more about medicine than we’ll ever learn in any college,” he told LIFE.com. “In the field, there’s no time for doctors and medics to ask questions, even when they see wounds they’ve never encountered before. They simply have to do, and the techniques they create on the fly—out of necessity—can save other lives later on.”


Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com


George Lott, 22, wounded in both arms by German mortar fire, suffers as doctors mold a plaster cast to his body, 1944.
George Lott, 22, wounded in both arms by German mortar fire, suffers as doctors mold a plaster cast to his body, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "'Gee, doc, I feel like both my arms were blown off,' says George Lott in battalion aid station as surgeon cuts away clothes to expose wounds."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "Pint of plasma is drained into Lott's arm in treatment of shock which has set in. Both arms have been immobilized in traction splints. Lott's last memory of aid station is the moment in which his chaplain, Father John J. White (cross on helmet), leaned over to encourage him."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "Feeling better, less than an hour after his wounding, George Lott smokes a cigarette. Morphine is taking effect. [This is a] time out after splinting his left arm and before putting right arm through painful procedure of stretching it on traction splint."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "On litter Lott is carried from the ambulance into collecting station. At collecting station the patients from a regiment's battalion aid stations are assembled for evacuation to the rear."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
George Lott, wounded American medic, has X-rays taken at a portable Army field unit, France, 1944.
George Lott, wounded American medic, has X-rays taken at a portable Army field unit, France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "In body cast [George] Lott lies unconscious at end of three-hour operation in Nancy [France] Hospital. For those who will later take care of him, surgeons write diagnosis on cast. 'FCC' means 'fracture, compound, comminuted' (broken bones, penetrating flesh wounds, shattering of bone). Chief surgical effort was to improve blood supply to lower right arm by operation on single large artery."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Wounded American Army medic George Lott under anesthesia in France, 1944.
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott under anesthesia in France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "On first morning George Lott wakes to find himself encased in 30-lb. plaster cast. Between the battalion aid station and this point his memory is blank. He can move fingers of left hand."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "Cigarette is given to Lott by Red Cross girl. From the beginning he showed great patience in learning to depend on others,"Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Wounded American Army medic George Lott in France, 1944.
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott in France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "Weather watch was kept for three days by Lott and other wounded who were scheduled to fly home with him to U.S."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Doctors work on body cast of wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.
Not published in LIFE. Doctors work on body cast of wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Caption from LIFE. "In Paris hospital, where he awaited a plane for U.S., Lott is carried to ward by German army medical corps prisoners."Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott awaiting a flight to England from France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott is loaded into plane for flight to England from France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott on plane to England from France, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Not published in LIFE. Wounded American Army medic George Lott (standing, left) and other troops, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
Wounded American Army medic George Lott with Purple Heart, 1944.
Wounded American Army medic George Lott with Purple Heart, 1944.Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945
LIFE magazine, Jan. 29, 1945. (Note: This is best viewed using the "Full Screen" option; see button at right.)Ralph Morse—Life Magazine

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