Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

 

On July 17, 1944, after an Allied air raid and the shooting of a headquarters vehicle, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was seriously injured and remained lying on the road, not far from the overturned car. His fellow travelers carried the body of Rommel, who had not regained consciousness, to the Laniel laundromat, which was located a few dozen meters from the accident. Rommel lay there for 45 minutes until his adjutant Hauptmann Hellmuth Lang found a new vehicle.

​

On the found truck, all the wounded were taken to the hospital of the French Cathedral of St. Joseph in Livarot. Rommel's body was laid on a wooden table, after which he was examined by the pharmacist M. Lessen. He was unable to help, since there was not everything necessary in such a serious condition of the wounded, and therefore he made only two injections of ethereal camphor.

​

By midnight, Rommel was taken to the Luftwaffe hospital in Bernay, 40 km from Liverot. To do this, the passenger seat was pulled out in a sedan car and a mattress was put in order to comfortably transport the body of the field marshal. German military doctors, after examination, made a diagnosis: a fracture of the base of the skull, a fracture of the cheekbone bone, two fractures of the temporal bone, the left temple was dissected and strongly depressed, the left eyeball was punctured, the left eardrum was bleeding, broken glass severely cut the face.

​

In the hospital in Bern, Erwin Rommel was in ward 9 until July 23, when he was transferred to the Le Vesinet hospital, where a highly qualified doctor Esch from Germany arrived specifically to treat the field marshal. Later, at the insistence of the restless Rommel, who simply could not sit still was transferred to a hospital in Ulm on August 8. A couple of days later he was released home to Herrlingen.

​