1954-04-17 — Page 8

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1954.

FRONT LINE DOCTOR

Beginning today-THE CHINA MAIL presents

THE GREAT UNTOLD STORY OF THE WAR

This is the story-pieced together for the first time from authoritative documents-of how the great advances in medicine were made under the urgent thrust of war. "Front Line Doctor" is based on the official papers edited by Sir Zachary Cope, the distinguished surgeon. The author also acknowledges the help given by others of high eminence in medicine in bringing to the nation's attention thin inspiring record. It is one of achievement in War that now touches our lives in peace.

M

AJOR IAN AIRD -now Professor

of Surgery

at

London Univer- sity and the man who did the famous operation this year on the Biamese twina

was smoking a cigarette outside his tent.

The night before he had operated 22 times in his canvas lean-to attached

a three-ton lorry,

to

It was a cool November afternoon in 1941, and just beginning to get dark in the Western Desert near Guar el Abid. A column of tanks began clanking to- wards the tents of the Indian

field ambulance to which Aird was attached.

He watched the idly. An R.A.F. plane dew overheid, Then, with the surdenness with which such things

happen

By JOHN DEANE POTTER

PROF. AIRD

Curious encounter in the desert.

He was helped by his orderlies

war, the tanks opened fire onurut Father Flynn, a Roman the plane and shot it down,

They were only 50 yards the away, and Alrd enuld see white German prosses on their sicles.

Bullets began to wasp through the air and make quick scuffles in the sand.

He and his team dived into a * trench.

Nazi troops

A German doctor said to Aird: "We would like you to dress This man's wound. We are taking him back with us."

Aird replied: "Alt right; we will transfuse him first"

un-

Airti's orderlies, whisling loudly to show their disregard for the German officers, opened the lid of A rope-handled, painted wooden box rather like Aheer ernte,

Germons The

watched They saw enrefully curiously. packed rows of bottles and Un boxes.

An orderly poured colourless Hquil from оле bottle into Another containing what seemed a cream-coloured powder.

The Germans showed intense Interest. Aird explained that the powder WHA dried blood plan the Itquid was glucose saline.

Far ahead

Catholte padre, who had been a Trappist mank before he joined

e Army. By virtue of his TVE minutes later this extra-

former monk bad I ordinary

gazed audience vows, the hardly spoken for years, but, fascinated as the milky fluid

Army, he once in the

never from the bottle attached to the stopped talking. That night his tent pole was dripping through challer cheered up the wounded. rubber tube into

colonel's arm,

colonn

Next morning they stened to the radio in the ward. The B.D.C. snitt that Rommel had only 40 tanks left. Aird and Father Flynn looked out of the tent door. There they saw more grey than 80 Nazi tanks rolling past THE squat misshapen

tanks circled round firing on to give battle to the British. Chem.

At the close of this encounter Then a group of tough, dusty Nazi troops with subgroup of high-ranking German machine

up and staff officers came motioned them to come out of Aird's tent. With them, on the trench.

With hands up for surrender, offer, was a badly wounded this curious

guns

they then explained was a medical unit,

then

arrived in

R

their

The incredible operation ? Prof. Aird (of ‘Boko* fame) operates behind enemy

- lines as an astonished

Rommel looks on

After the operation, Alrd had Junch with three Italian officers in charge of his guard. And then suddenly British, armoured ents began passing

The the tent. Italians jumped into their staff ear and fled at once, leaving the medical unit without

guard.

Aird and his unit could have escaped. But somehow it did not occur to them leave. Only

Drawing by ROBB

PRBLIMINARY — An orderly prepares the patient for the blood transfusion....

drives

Long. Jolting resert were often agony to a soldier with a broken leg in a splint. The

pressure from pluster of paris used the old-fashioned way caused deep, penetrating zores, The baitlo surgeons worried about this as they operated in their loast-hot tents, or under lorry headlampa.

Within Ave months of the first Wavell offensive they had in- vented the Tobruk spint. This

Is a hairpin-shaped from bar longer than a man's log-whose two ends 1 mto a padded ring. The broken leg was posted through the ring and

adhesive bandage

round it. From that

wrapped bandage

on attachment went to the end of the splint which enabled the

surgeon to keep the broken onda of the bone pulled apart. The whole limi was padded with cotton wool and firmly encased in plaster of parla

In such a Tobruk splint, a wounded man could much more comfortably face Д swaying Army truck, a plane bumping over the desert air pockets, or a rolling destroyer carrying him from Tobruk to hospital iny Alexandria.

Top gear

WHILE the surgeons in

the desert Improvised, back in Cairo the medical services were shifling into top gear.

Major-General "Jock Monro, Consulting Surgeon to the Army, arrived In the Middle Eat in October 1940. He and his

Immediately colleagues began experimenting with the organisation of surgical teams just behind the front lines,

His view was that wounded in the Middle soldiers need surgery at

the ital earliest possible moment.

They arranged for so much of 1t

and

And his Middle East mobile

48 hours had passed since 11

Thus ended 30 fantastic hours BRITISH ANAKSTIETISTS for bacillary dysentery, plague abdominal operations had been spent unharmed between the led the way to new hairbreadth of Servicemen

liko Coscs

this German and British armics. techniques. performed.

The anaesthetic East. should not be moved until the 1 tell this incident in con- most widely used by them was tenth day, although every day siderable detall. Why? Because the truth drug-Pentothol. after the third makes it safer.

believe its

carried in a phial significance was

it to be sent to Egypt from surgical units, which began to So they decided to stay where cannot be uver-stressed.

This injected into the vein.

the America that it was the hidden go out into the desert battles, German moment in with the

factor at El Alamein. Germans did not have it. the desert they were,

By late became the blue-print for the with a

(And, 1943, when the side one

and

battle was whole ArthyTM for the then unknown British surgeon incidentally, tanks

the casually

the blood Americans

fought,

He and his officers also form- British had con- were producing the British

quered bacillary dysentery. The ed blood transfusion plasma to the astonishment of

units, other,

standard for BIOCHEMISTS Germans were still taking heavy which became his German opposite number—

casualties from it,

battles from Alamein to tho the whole seene sums up Allied perfected penicillin-the

Rhine. medical superiority over the chemical that murders microbes

גום

25-pounders on

Fantastic

Somo

more

uso It.)

BRITISH

years rductant

the

to

The answer

They

men.

A German doctor had a rapid conversation with Rommel.

спелу. It was ahead almost which was discovered by a

organised the surgical Then he said to Aird: "Your

from the outset and as the war Scotsman. 'Its manufacture on

teams Ist auch A methods

NEXT morning

way that are Impressive. We British armoured cats came

developed the lenci Krew A production-line basin in the

surgeons had eight hours on would like you to look after the

States was a tremendous EY were the Nazi medical duty, and eight hours off. This forward. They told Alrd to put greater.

Our scientists and men ör

tor, inter-milled organ-

services so nomerent con- was Imperative. his wounded into ambulances medicino mado

It meant that Now I suggest this Is D

such and try

seven-bation and co-operation between sidering the to drive them

to the lengua

great German re- tired hands did not falter and moment worth lingering over.

strides during the scientists

and

American bla

imperil a man's life. big putation in medicine? Iloe six miles Why did the German M.O. British front

wor that modern practice has business. Again the Germans behind them

The Nazis were the victims of This organisation was BOON make this request?

been completely revolutionised, did not have it is secret was their own creed. They had cut appreciated by serving As the

tusty Because for the first time, in

convoy of

BRITISH DOCTORS were as closely guarded as the atom themselves off from world They know if they were vehicles began slowly to move prompt to realise that blood bomb. cnoounter with a Vene

German tanks came transfusion would

medical research, British surgeon

They had wounded they would have the the life in the middle away

BRITISI They of

CHEMICAL purged, imprisoned or frighten- best medicul attention almost of the desert in the middle of grinding towards them.

person suffering from MANUFACTURERS

made ed away most of their best immediately. stop, their wide shock. So they organised a mulion after million mepacrine medical men-many the war, they realised how far skidded to a

them It was this that made one ahead Britain was in medical tracks churning up small foun- blood transfusion service which tablets. This meant that British Jewish

soldier on a stretcher any to a tains of sand, The Germans bad no

the best in the world. troops could fight in the most a research.

However, such political pre- pal of als going forward with The dried plasma for treating their

German tank erews They invented process for lever-haunted jungles without watched

occupations did not concern the his battalion: the ambulances making dry

which risk of catching the shivering. British desert doctors, who were mate, Arf Arley Street is just plasma colonel wounded.

officers, through the long slits in their could

years debilitating, dendly malaria. sun

about what armour.

Their guns pointed at This plasma was parachuted to BRITISH PHARMA into them, but they did not Are, men fighting in the jungles or COLOGISTS realised the im

most cars They let the British doctors and ferried to the

bitterly portance of a drug called their wounded escape.

contested beach-head.

sulphaguanidine as an antidote

They said he was Colonel von that this The Ger- Stephan, commander of a crack nan commander gave an order German panzer regiment, who al and the tanks ground on. But had been hit in the chest by they lett 50 Italians, who were British shell. following in lorries, them.

to guard With

WER

an

wounded We

Rommel and his officer wearing tanks goggles and a high crowned cop. talking earnestly desert it was some

climbed time before the they had seen, British doctors recognised him. their tanks and armoured

and drove of. It was General Rommel,

While the German clattered round in the vulsldre, Aird stayed In the ward tent all that night.

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NO RED TAPE TO GUIDE

THE

LADY CLEANERS

By LES ARMOUR

SPRING, as Lady Violet motion reveals that no lady that the rules

of

Xploring new patha in battle in front of us." surgery. They were the medical pathfinders of the war. One of the Brat of them was Major Both Stephen.

"Don't woITY

Abandoned

&

When he and his team were ordered to move into a desert the surgeon, it was hospital they were told it was to be both surgeon and soldier, curious period this: you had Just another exercise.

But they were fold to treat it

sometimes one dominant, some-

As if it were a real battle. The times another. Major Bob date was December 1940.

Stephen in the early titsert

When the ambulances drew battles, once operated without up, they were full of wounded sleep for five nights. The first Wavell push nights of these were

men.

Three Spont

wero

against the Axis forces in North operating on Italion wounded. Africa had begun.

Then a captured Italian medical unit was sent to help As the Army began to crash London. House of Commons "accom- Nevertheless, it would appear forward across the desert, the bim, That night it happened

Italian tents are strictly a surgical teams followed. Often that the permitted to clean above matter of tradition. The Minds they used captured Italian tents uttered with seriously wounded ex- shoulder-height Neither is she try of Works official directive and surgical equipment.

permitted to dust the tops of says that

cleaners must do discovered the Italians had the Next morning Stephen was "opaque lampshades,

everything up to a height of 12 finest quality tents, with double awakened by an ..Italian These operations require the feet (lampshades and all) walls to keep out the sand, dust priest who acted as interpreter.

Bonham Carter plained to British radio listeners 1 few days ago, may be a poetic affair for the male of the species - but, for women, it means mops, brooms, pails and vacuum cleaners.

It also means lady-like joaths muttered under tho breath and husbands aroused from their noggins of ale to face the grim business of turning all the chaits upside down.

assistance of the Ministry Works-the assistance of Ministry of Works men cxnet one, does the cleaning while other holde this judder.

two to be we are assured,

SLIGHTLY TRICKIER

The alightly tickler.

matter

men.

They

cept in the Palace of West- of

The tents had also The priest told him that as soon minster where the shoulder-line and flies.

as the British officers left, the wooden floors, is official.

And they also had fleas. The Italians abandoned their wound- Since it is doubtful that any of British surgical team scrubbeded and went to bed. The priest the the indies measures 12 feet to the tents with everything they sat up all night giving them

the shoulder, it may be as had, but the fleas persisted, water, trying to nurse them. sumed that the

Stephen

Major Stephen sto bila break- Ministry, off- Major.

muthodically cially at any rate, frowns on the recorded in his diary that during tion. Then he went to

fast with grim Scottish deliberg- traditional practice outside the one day he had killed 381 ffens senior Italian offer.

on his own body.

Ho took out his revolver and loailed; it slowly in front of him. Then ho fired it just above his head, nearly perting bls hair with it.

anything like this happens * said, waving the

Torture

|z6cheidhardtubay

the

There are, of course, no hard Palace. and fast rules. No pieces of

All this, of course, is, im- | red tape are strung along the portant lest the House of Com- walls to indicate official mons code should be adopted as shoulder height." It depends sort of global housewife's It may be, however, that on the "size of the cleaner." charter. Lady Violet ja too fentful for The lampshade

here is forced to contemplate THE plague of feas may not again beware, skrad- the well-being of her che,

Down in Whitehall, for - leaves the impression that there indignation, admonishing: "Dear, token limb who gets a fea thot will be reveral

sound important, until you report the housewife bristling with

realise that a man with" a dering Italian's face, the next stance, it seems that the lady is some difference between you know what the rules say cleaners hav

and those and the whole top of the house trapped in his plaster suffers lower." much under control.

No reading, no climbing parent. Opaque shades appear lampshades! I just can't bear So the surgeons there and then ladders, and no juggling with to be strictly men's work. Per to live in all this muck any devised a makeshift but manst long poles down there.

haps they cannot be trusted to longer and don't expect me to effective therapy -- pouring An Intriguing plece of cross- dust the kind which can be seen hoid... the fødder for you chloroform between the leg and examination from the report on, through/

allers very "opaque" want or trank- is positivaly black. And those exquisite and whending torture.

which are

JOHNNY HAZARD

'BE TO INTRODUCĂ. MYSELS MĪGIEU HOOKAN....... AM MALES. MONGUE D'UNDERE- FOR THE MARCHAND ARY

[GALLERY/

GREASED TI

· MAKE YOU. ACQUAINTAFER.

OL MAN CHARCHANDA

either...

“AB MI MARCHANDY COMED WECRETARY I HAVE HANG OF HIS TRANSAC

YOU I AM QUITI

AM REAL

the plaster to kill the filess.

By Frank Robbing

BY ALL MBANG! 'ANY PIRIEND OF TOM

JA IVELOOME GEREST IPEREU NOONANÍ

The now

manesthetica

an

ation

Miguel

inches