In 1938 15-year-old Scout Martins, along with many other passengers, was seriously injured in a train accident, but refused the offer of a stretcher, saying that others needed it more than he.
Though bleeding profusely from his wounds, he refused the attention of stretcher-bearers, rushed from behind the tank with a Lewis gun, and captured the strong point, taking about half the garrison prisoners.
He saw action in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and, by October 31, 1918, was a private first class serving as a stretcher bearer in the 354th Regiment's Company L.
On 2 September 1918 in the Dury-Arras Sector, France, when his company had suffered heavy casualties, Private Young, a stretcher-bearer, went forward to dress the wounded in open ground swept by machine-gun and rifle fire.
Stoney was carried on a stretcher down the aisle of St James's Church, Piccadilly, where he married Mary.
He lay motionless on the ice for several minutes before being wheeled off on a stretcher and taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a broken nose and a grade-three concussion.
Richard Alexander Henderson, First World War stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli and the Somme
As the line served Rochester and its famous Mayo Clinic, there was at least one car on each train with wider doors for allowing patients on stretchers and other accommodations.
Plier-type stretchers are sometimes used, particularly with leather strapping that is too short to allow a loop through a traditional stretcher.