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The 36th Division Archive
Tech/4 Walter E. Bingham Jr.
Combat Medic
Medical Detachment, I Company, 142nd Infantry Regiment
Walter E. Bingham was a mortician before the war but served part-time in the 111th Medical Battalion of the Texas National Guard. When war broke out and the 36th mobilized he was transferred to the medical detachment of the 142nd IR. First seeing action at Salerno, Bingham spent the entire war with the 142nd.
At first, he oversaw operations of a mobile pharmacy/medical truck but sometime around Southern France or late Italy, he transferred as a frontline company aid-man (nomenclature for a company attached combat medic) in I Company. Seeing the terrible combat in the Vosges and push into Germany firsthand, as the company medic Bingham served to save and stabilize countless American boys who were wounded in action.
The group is now about 90 or so images in total in addition to his Red Cross ID card and depicts a range of topics from Africa to Italy to Germany. Amongst the subject matter pictured are captured German items, POWs, medical gear, vehicles, crossroads, liberation signs, 36th depots, nurses, field services, medics with CIBs before the CMB, and much more.
Photographs from Italy:
Photographs from France and Germany:
