A stretcher-bearer is a person who carries one end of a stretcher — the flat bed with handles used to carry someone who is hurt and cannot walk. Because it takes two people, one at each end, a stretcher-bearer almost always works in a pair. The word belongs above all to war: in the First and Second World Wars, stretcher-bearers were soldiers whose job was to run out into the fighting, unarmed, and bring back the wounded. Many of them were men who refused to fight for religious reasons and served this way instead, and they were often killed doing it, so the word carries real weight and respect in English. You also meet it in mountain rescue and at large public events, and in reports of disasters. It is a slightly old-fashioned word now; today's hospitals and ambulances use 'paramedic' for the trained people who do this and much more. Written with a hyphen, and the plural is stretcher-bearers.