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Show j Gives Blood and ! Flies With It to Island War Zone Reporter Declares More And More Blood Needed For Wounded Yanks. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. Jack McDowell, a reporter on the San Francisco Call-Bulletin staff, went to the Red Cross blood donor center one day recently and gave a pint of blood. About 48 hours later McDowell arrived ar-rived at Guam with the blood he had donated and that given by others, oth-ers, and saw some of it used for a transfusion. He's back in San Francisco after the trip, reporting that "more, more and more" blood is needed for wounded Yanks. "Just 48 hours after flying over the Red Cross blood donor center where more than 100 other San Franciscans and I put blood from our veins into little pint bottles, I stepped to the air strip of an advanced ad-vanced American base within 1,500 miles of Tokyo," he said in a news story. "With the speed and ingenuity of the naval air transport service I was able to make Jules Verne look like a crawling piker, but the real thrill came in a forward area hospital as I watched color return to the face of a critically burned Seabee. Watches Transfusion. "In the bottle suspended above his hospital cot was blood donated by Chesla O'Brien, 22, I saw it drained from her arm as she lay on a cot adjacent to mine in the blood center. cen-ter. (Bottles containing the blood were labeled with the names of the donors.) "My own pint of blood was in the hopper somewhere else, but I was able to follow that of Miss O'Brien across the Pacific to the advance blood bank at Guam and ultimately to the veins of Willie R. Boyter, 34, of Pine Bluff, Ark. "Boyter, a veteran of D-day fighting fight-ing in the Marianas, was thin and pale. He had charged up the beach of this particular island through the hell of Japanese mortar and artillery artil-lery fire. His buddies dropped dead or wounded beside him as his outfit pushed through the fire. Boyter came through the battle unhurt only to fall victim to the accidental explosion of a drum of turpentine. Now, according to medical officers, he is on the mend. "Boyter wanted to know more about the girl who had sent her blood to help him back to health and the United States. I told him she had donated blood three times, had recently moved to San Francisco Fran-cisco from Boston, and that one of the first things she did was call the blood donor center and make an appointment. Vet Sends Thanks. " 'You don't know how thankful I am,' Boyter said, licking his dry lips in the tropical heat. 'Will you take a message back to the little girl in San Francisco for me? Tell her something to make her feel good tell her how much I appreciate her sending part of her own blood all the way over here to me.' 41 'Rav ' hp pnntinupH 'will vnn tpll that girl something else for me, too? Tell her I hope her blood gets me home to my wife quicker. I haven't seen her in 22 months.' "Boyter's wife, Caroline, manages a coffee shop in a hotel in Pine Bluff. "Shipments of whole blood are leaving San Francisco by air every day. They are landing at forward area hospitals two days later. The ingenious plan is working, but the demand is for more, more and more." |