A stretcher-bearer is a person who carries a stretcher, generally with another person at its other end, especially in a war or emergency times when there is a very serious accident or a disaster. It signifies also volunteers or benevolent people who help carry a stretcher or sometimes a litter or a pram.
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In case of military personnel, for example removing wounded or dead from a battlefield, right term is now combat medics. The wounded soldier had to wait until the stretcher-bearers arrived or simply the stretcher-bearers will find them.
Origin and history of arts
This common noun appears between 1875 ans 1880. It is largely used before and during the First World War.
The British English verb to stretcher means "to carry someone on a stretcher". It is always transitive ( + adverb/preposition).
A stretcher-bearer party, sometimes a stretcher party or company, is a group or a band of people temporally or regularly associated which have to carry injured persons with stretchers. In army stretcher-bearers were kind of specific soldiers who work with military ambulances and medical services. A famous stretcher-bearer and ambulance driver during the First World War was the young Ernest Hemingway.
In the arts, painting, figure or figurine sculpture or photography, it is a common topic as well as the couple of stretcher-bearers or the stretch-bearer alone.
A reel civil work
The stretcher bearer is not only a carrier.