THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY. 1, 1954. ' ́*
FRONT LINE DOCTOR The story that week by week brings to light at last the medical secrets of the war
Buttle's Bottles
Even the gin
empties
were called in feed the ‘bank' that dealt in human
life. for 24 hours every day
•
ESNER was just over in the Royal Vologe of Surgeons 181 Land coln's Inn Fields,
it had been a traditional dinner in honour of an or
Bux- dinary member called
Da browne, who left a sunt of money in his will so that 100 fellows could die
alice a yUKAN.
and
It is
at his ex the
1s
After dumner, a group guests talked together in th
kather- library, will: bound books and Tutal bre busta of lung-deal doctors, One of them was a roomel in the War Office modial directorato.
I was a fateful moment
history. world in
Spanish War was
ended.
vel
Mi
1st and Her haranging his way towards
the Month meeting
As the W aur
Oker
sipped his coffee, he made
no Berrel ot the
situat 1941.
by JOHN DEANE POTTER
HOW. MUCH CAN
THE HUMAN "BODY STAND:
flare to another example Juhen from Sir Zachary Cope's great book, “ Surgery In World War Two," on which Froni Line Doctor' is bused.
NEROKANT attached to A the Guards armoured
division was blown up in tank which hit a minie. He laige abrasion Derr had is right lower ribs.
AB operation revealed a Lear In his liver. He made * good recovery, and WAN went home in the hospțial ship Amsterdam. Ife wa sili a stretcher sain, never Having been qui of bed
ince The operation.
a
Then the ship struck mine, | n ur ut al hed, slid down the ship's side into the sea, sud swam fo a destroyer.
The wurgeon's report said: aboard. lot of
put him
· Oner
Navy
right."
seen
able t materi available
be manufactured
withi Britab.
I miksi be suitable for use in the dark, in the
in exposed
places.
T'AN
Within a few months, Prager had his apparatus ready, with its rubber and steel tubes,
Nothing 4 445 forgotten A
of milk manufacture
bottles, glass
sel to making tough vessels which could be sterilised and roughty handled, ngreed to erucke the containers
Then another thought truck the researchers. The wale bottle would be handled by nares, who would have small hande they might dirop it. It was decided to stushurdise a punched- In wat bottle so musts could grip it.
"When war broke out, a ward was taken uver in Southmead
start the Hospital, Bristol, Armi
tronaftenen service. I Cambridge, another transtusena
planned.
At ve WHA
Frozen Blood
Di
furs to the rat meddon for beat Br something else was hap The War Clice was prepare the thought alaritat? ing for war
or Ho. The
within a year
Be
Sunga
for
Cord they devise a Ivol- pen, rght, tonal AINTZIOA apparatus atach could be
Latured quickly!
No Money
in Cambridgga", pening Ronald Greaves,
thember of the universaly medical staff, was experimentlig Wilh steel cylinders full of blood
Because they already knew and they realised more and more ma the war went on--that blood 11 the greatest life-saver The bus?
The deadly condition called surgical freezing shark.
Wits
After
andidata
1
were
In 1940 he reported What, by blood fest and then withdrawing the moisture from I, he could make dry plusma. serious injury, burns
The advantages of this {U' blooding. The pressure of
Ordinary hunan The volume incalculable, the blond talks.
must be blood will keep for three weeks must be restored
If it is refrigerated. Dry plasma would keep for three years in any temperature.
It
PUIE Colonel aire pointed out topped up, like a car battery. Tay The War
Once couki not allo: funds i peacetime for such research. Of came The wast course, when there would be plenty of money, but in the meantime...
bio phock cases were transfused natural hinodor with with plasma, which is blood with the red and white cells removed.
rancan WHA
could not be voyage round
A blox!
to
closed, and blood
sent on the long the Cape.
transfusio
service war blendy in operation fur the Eighth Army In a hospital built by Farouk lo Cairo. It became known to every servi
DRAWIRD
TT лове
man in the Middle East ng the At H plus 5-flye boura after the D-Day landinga
Fillerath Scottish,
Working 141
the basement
f
the hospital was u un called Gladwyn Buttle, a scientist sent out from the Bristol plant to help [ stort }] Midle East blood transfusion service,
of the
were Fe-
Everything was against him and his team. Sumo apparatus had to be made locally by
and uncertain
inefficient workinen; domestle Egyptian
refrigerators Lype quisitioned to store the blood.
And
there were no botties, But
with Buttie,
the
cry "Bottles for Buttle,"
soon settled that situation. He used sterlised
in compiles.
+
Unbelievable
wara at Arromanches-Buttio's Bottles
moca "pectacles and said, with a chuckie: "You have no ideu the number of dead in bottles to rolleet from were able the Gezina and Turt clubs. IL was an unbelievable amount."
we
and his men begun Buttle energolically taking blood from
in the Delta. Survicemen
By the time the British Forcus swung across the Meriterranean in pursuit of the defeated, re- trouting Nazis, 100,000 Servico- mon had givon their blood In Afrku to save their comrades.
game
Then
tho day of Alamein. British tanks huddled together, their guns drooping in the dark, waiting for the attack which was to throw Rommel out But now
And right behind of Africa, them Professor at the
Buttle's bottles- were School thousands of them. Pharmacy-today sits in a phial- Httered laboratory" in Blooms- bury Square In London.
UT-JAWED Wellcome
London University
As soon as Greaves' pilot plant was found to be working saus- factorily J full-scale drying pins
built ክር።
at Chilton JUTJA Polden, 30 miles from Bristol,
This meant that plasm in great quantities would be avail- able to the Middle Eaul, where It must be Wavell was Aghting the Italians I must be in the desert. The
But first the problem whe to The The surgeon agreed at one find a suitable apparatus.
D: Lamelot that the research could be pard sUTEVUMS
mucun curator. for out of
college.
Kave
T the funds
the Proger, their this job.
xi
His orders were: Two trans- sturdy and simple.
Now when World War
Roomed, why Was
W
ری
As he recalled the Calro days Mediter- for me he looked over his haft
After two years of hard work. the blood transfusion units were ready. They were lying side by side with the batllo surgeons"
One who suffered at their hands speaks his mind on the subject of the Japanese males
JAP WOMENFOLK ARE INFINITELY
SUPERIOR
HEN
Japan
shambled to shabby
ruin in the bright-
TO
By Donald
of August 1945, an Thep stripped the Em- tion" from the
age had already died
with
THEIR MEN
Bruce
lives to bring them food. They were good people.
The
Now slie can clear out, bar and baggage, kimono and clogn, thumb her nose at him,
Japanese for them all and wait at for Government to atone par- table. perer of his divinity, the flames that had des instance, yet kept the wea tially for this shamefulness, troyed most of Tokyo and man in office as head of the the answer was short and had wiped out the whole of nation.
sen They
him sweet: "So sorry, but the Yokohama in three dread around factories and had honourable canh ta honour and tell him to go to hell. ful fiory hours,
him pictured beside piece- ably short." Months before, an a POW workers to show how domo-
in Tokyo, I had
of
seon
night
about
with
cratic
ho really was,
For my yon again. that's a Sumte good thing-for Japan,
one
lished
Thoir only "crime" was that they had to apawn ruch shock- ers as Tojo the Toetag and Hirota the Head Case,
Women should have been encouraged more by the Allies to take office and jump ahead in the government of Japan Maybe it's not too late. Their
* ་
there
truck. A few miles behind the Alamein no were the distri
with blood and buting trucki, plasm ready to send up further supplies.
More
of
than 3,000 bottles blood were used at Alamein
began to move As the Army
the desert after rapidly over Rommel's arany, aeroplanes were used for the first time to bring blood to wounded men in for- When the ward battic areas.
a daily plane fighting was on,
blood from the left Cairo with Fifteenth Scottish.
the first time in This was
a full-scale blood history that transfusion service was available unmediately to soldiers in battle. transfusion In tune the blood
one of the service became
ut greatest masterpieces gunisation in the war,
British
the
blood bank From the Cairo which-Buto and his men bullt up came an organisation whose i was that no proud boast
could be Servicemen wounded
in anywhere world -in the damp, dappled jungle, the lee-jagged Arctic sen or the sun-smothered desert without blood or plasma bring available.
In Ship, Too
LLS
the closing years of the war, trusfusion was undertaken routine in all warships.
Yet as the transfusion teams did their job they occasionally encountered the most primitive and unreasonable prejudices.
GERMANS -- particularly fanatical captured Nazis--often refused surgical help if it meani atrunsfusion of British blood.
Very often when they PC- covered and sald how it they
doctors
replied: felt, British "You should do. You have four pints of Jewish blood in you."
But one young Nazi with a serious abdominal wound and a refused a trans- broken thigh fuzion.
The surgeona operated without his consent.
When he recovered from tha anaesthetic he got up, sill wear- ing d Tobruk splint, and smashed his head against the teni pule until he died.
But it was not only the Nazis who behaved strangely,
were
• AMERICANS
ofton afraid they might be transfused with blood from their coloured troops.
• INDIANS feared that blood let the spirit of another maa into them.
• Barrigh, too. One officer who found that blood deliver- ed to him had been given by 100 captured Germans ordered It to be poured away. I am happy to report that this soNAC- less order was not carried out.
While the transfusion unita met these difficulties in Atrica and Italy, in Britain the D-Day FN order to do this and to build-up was slowly mounting.
IN
help civilians injured in ar raitis, moro than A million people gave their blood,
Six of the best battle surgeons were recalled from Italy to advise the H.A.M.C. on geld surgery under fire. With them camo Buttle now
always known as the Bank Manager the and some
of his transfusion officers.
Sir Lionel Whitby, one of the the blood trans- pioneers at fusion service,
says in official history:---
of
NO
Deception
to Italy to the British Forces' thers, Burgeons soon found that they leukod because the rubber hung, which corked the bottle, shrank,
One doctor experimented and found that the artificial rubber of which they were made was faulty. They tried to patch them up with stloking plaster but it was not successful.
be-
Frantic signals travolled tween Italian H.Q. and Elsdu- hower invasion headquarters in England, Each sei was examined and rotested before it was given to the Invasion forces.
And on D-Day, two blood transfusion unita ware on the beach at Arromanches at H plus ive-five hours after the Örst assault troops had waded ashore.
They landed their specially water proofed lorrlos from landing craft, and wore towed to the beaches by amphibious "ducks." They each had 30 buttles of blood, 150 bottles of plasma and saline, and supplies of penicillin.
half a
The beachheadh WOB mile deup. On the sand, wound-- ed then were tying on stretchers, "There were special clips on the
The stretchers to hold
trano-
fusion botilen. If these were
orderlica to available,
stuck stleks in the sand and hung the bottles on them.
to
There were two doctors cach unit, instead of the usual If one WOS killed or wounded, the unit could still Curry on.
one.
1.d
The orderllos did most of the transfusions. They had done
1 so often they were more nimble with the needlo than most doctors.
While this was happening on the bench, the airborne troops who landed behind the main forces had their own trans- fusion units, who dropped with them.
Unbroken
BLOOD was dropped to them
baskets
опр
kapok - lined wicker containing six bottles. bottle was broken, men
Not Paratroop transfusion found some gravel pits, where
to they were able είνα blood under shell are.
in
men
Sixteen days after the invasion,
Beld
near Bayeux, the whole blood bank was assembled, with Its refrigerated forries. off Every day, Dakotas took from Fliton airfield, near Bristol blood bank, with fresh supplies.
As the armies advanced across France into Germany, planes flew right behind the front lince loaded with blood.
The organisation never falter- ext If fog grounded the planes, speedboats were under stand-by orders at Southampton to dash across the Channel with the day's supply.
Every soldier and airṛpan knew the "vampire vana" as they slithered along muddy lanes or dusty tracks. Military convoys, without being told, would pulí over to give them priority on the choked, fire-swept roads. They knew their contents meant the difference between life and death to wounded men.
THE
Last 'Bank'
+
HE average transfusion to cach wounded man was four pints.
And in the battles of Northwest Europe, 123,000 trang» fusions were given from D-Day / until the end of the war.
Then one day in 1945, Buttle and his trucks clattered down a cobbled street in Brussels. They stopped before a disused choco- laté factory which was to be their last blood bank..
"The British Army could claim it was the only army- But REAL HOPE
Sco Mishima, for instance, on new-found freedom could bo a
Allied or enemy-linked with a an It's a two-edged weapon.
American educated Japanese wonderful spur to a country to death, Today
transfusion service capablo orange
of ring
Emperor worship,
JUST before D-Day blood be- We've done
warnan, tells in her just fashioned by 500 B29's on the most subtle poison of
only
producing its own blood The
Broader Pub lose its cruelty and its war-
came part of the deception the gusty night of March all, is stronger than ever.
really good thing in Japan. (Gollancz, 13/8) of the amaze-
way like nature.
blood substitutos sultable for plan. It was deliberately west- We've freed women from ment the ordinary woman (but
ed. Weeks before the invasion use in any Beld of operation. 10, (Japs still talk
They'va taken Immense
was duo, lorries of blood this fearsome
who knew better? strides since the war, Maybe We abolished Shintoism, the chains of centuries of not Sumic,
the Bristol "Experience of modern mobile travelled from the troupeĽS"
showed It was contro to the Southampton area. warfare now, too. I If women's influences are not usually impossible to And time
It was not pooded, but the Buttle wiped his brow as he obtain blood from developed
oped to provide the brake
planning
authorities raplired pave the order to start emloading during the course of a heavy that blood and plasma were ons that will be needed before long
Hils refrigerators. It was the ehậ in Japan, we'll be hearing more
battlo,
The American the military and more about
and eventually to abandon their of the most vital Ingredients of of the road. elaborate equipment for collect modern warfare, Any, enemy cliques, who took to the woods,
dooty who saw extra lorry loads They had come a long way ing blood on a spot and adopt of blood leaving Bristol would since the night of the dinner in with pillala. In 1946, but who are now back in town with fler the British method of a central be able to predict fairly accur Lincoln's Jun Fielda.
blood bank furnished with blood ately that the invasion was due and waiting to cut their way
obtained by delivery from the within a few days. To stop any back into power.
United States."
information leaking out tha supplies did not change.
awe) tear out huge chunks the State dope that says die feudalism. Madame Butter. left when GI Joe first came to they're one so. Because
good old American hospitality. the capital, shattering for the Emperor, boy, and fly has got her wings back town with candy, courtesy, and
she rc- the myth of the inviolability like it. But we kept the and, for my yeni,
Courtesy mains the real hope of
towards
women? symbol of it.
Japan.
Unheard of. It was the talk of the bath-house. Well, for land's comes sakes, Suzuki-san, he.
of the sacred isles.
An age perished
in
and an outlook
the leaping GUNS AND TANKS
fires. The burnt out Japs
wanted answers to burning questions: How about this
war
If the day over when womon run the War Office, the Foreign Office, GOOD PEOPLE We said: No more war and rule the Diet building We'll change the in Tokyo, you won't get a DIVINE WIND that was for you.
There wasn't an Irma Greso And if you're not alarmed by supposed to blow when the Constitution to say so. And moan from me.
In Japan in wartline, The that possibility, I am. So, country was threatened; we did. Wo outlawod
women alone retained their hapo, are the women of Japon, They are a race apart hatred of was and their polite clip-slopping along the Ginan why hasn't the EMPEROR for the Jopa and arms for
men. They are the new, even to prisoners, Some of Tokyo like mystics, Or Raved us; and how about the Japs. Now, a few years from
risked their saviours. the
GODS that protect later, we're giving them day that follows the night, of them, in fact,
the Japan-7
tanks and guns, and planea the perfume versus for their own protection, smell. The Wind hadn't a puff. And if they tear up the
They are the other side of the Emperor hadn't a clue, now Constitution and go a oruel race in war-tender, and the Gods had failed the back to the old one sooner gracious, polite, obsequlous, nation.
than you think, we've only by the very nature of the ourselves to blame. We've prewar feudalistic setup be- proved the biggest marka in history.
BUNGLE & BUNGLE
When the end came the country was ripo for revolution in ideas, values,
soft tween the sexes.
FREE NOW
The armed forces are on the way back. The export
boys have already hitten Once he walked behind her
and away spf life. But the into foreign markets.
bumband. Once she called him
· My Lord and Marter. Once sho
dvorce from
Alles enite in and started But when prisoners of gouldo up business as, Bungle, Bungle, Bungle and Co., Un war, whom they treated so hien, "Umitado," "They've been doing shamefully, naked a couple brought home bunch Alt ever since,'
of years ago for a dona
JOHNNY HAZARD
HELLO, ARES D'ANIZIMI 1.4 KOMENDER ME? I WAS HERE) RESORT WHILE AND WITH. MRI NOONAN OF TEXAS...
AH YES, MSIEU HAZARD- WHAT CAN 22 FOR YOU?
IT ABOUT THAT REMBRANDT (THAT TURNED OUT TO BE A PHONY
ABOUT ART, AND HEITHER DO NO
KYDU SERJEE PONT KNOW ANITHING
PRIENDS. BUCK HORLAN
to
donors
Forces
It was the same in the Navy. M the outbreak of war, naval surgeons thought blood transfusions in ships were not a practical proposition. But in
„BOI WONDER UF, BUT OF ("COULD BUY THAT COURSE FANTINE FOR SOME.) NOTT
NOMURAL BUS
Then came a panja. A fow weeks before the Invasion forces wore due to land in Europe, 2,000 giving sets were sent' out
By Frank Robbins
ITAN NOT FOR SALES. NOBODY WILL RIVIER REEL THAT- [PAINTING HIRE 10 HOUR ARANI
NEXT WEEK The man Hitler didn't`want
this
an
Miguel