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Show LEIU FREE PRESS. LEHL UTAH Air Evacuation of Wounded Takes Its Place With March Across Sky as Bombers Modern Crack Troops 'Breakthrough' Plans and Finds Men Sulfa Drugs and Blood Plasma as One of Medicine's Greatest M ilitary Life-Savin- g By ELMO SCOTT WATSON one of the doughboys HE WASjumped down from a V-- been silenced, sprayed lead across his path and he slumped to the ground. There was a cry of "Medic! Medic!" and a moment later skilled hands were I . When the word came that it was on, the various battalion staffs of our regiment were called in from their command posts for a final review of the battle plan. Each one was given a mimeo- binding up his gaping wounds. The next morning four planes (unarmed swooped down near the field hospital where he lay. Land mines were exploding 150 yards away when the first two ships landed. Out from these planes sprang two flight nurses Marjean Brown of Columbus, Ohio, and Suella Bernard of Waynesville, Ohio. "All right, soldier, you're going to take a little trip with us!" smiled one of them. s) y, showing it rJS I - i1 them. Another mimeographed flying to a hospital in the vicinity of his home. the aircraft supervise the job. hops are as long as 12,000 miles. Only one patient among those evacuated by the Air Transport command has been lost as the result of air travel. Cooperation Does It. Close cooperation between the several organizations of the army makes possible successful air evacuation of the war wounded. The combat air forces outside the United States, the foreign wings of Air Transport command and various air commands in the United States, notably the First Trooper Carrier command, have done experimental work on the problem. In 1943, a total of 173,527 sick and wounded patients were evacuated by American military aircraft throughout the world, ATC carrying all those returned to this country. Here is the way evacuation from the combat areas is accomplished: Suppose the scene is Anzio beachhead. Medical corpsmen have toiled across the bullet-swearea, given a guy named Jim emergency attention, then inched back with him to the beach where he receives more extended treatment. At a nearby clearing station, the flight surgeon classifies the patients. He determines that this soldier, just arrived from the front, has a serious head wound which requires immediate surgical attention. When the transport plane flies in, Jim is among the outgoing patients. The medical air evacuation units transform the plane from its troop g or mission and do it quickly lest snipers or bombs disable the aircraft. Litter equipment is installed in three or four tiers and as many as 24 patients are loaded. Two men carry each litter to the plane, two more place it in position inside and a third man inside fastens it in place. In an emergency, the flight nurse in the plane must use untrained personnel for this work and occasionally she takes the place of a loader. When the plane takes off, the flight nurse is in medical charge. Only in extreme emergencies does the flight surgeon accompany her. A surgeon checks, when possible, during the refueling stops. Otherwise the flight nurse and a surgical technician, an enlisted man with noncommissioned officers' rating, handle the patients. The plane is equipped with an ambulance chest which is a small trunk containing bandages, medicine for the relief of pain, equipment for administering intravenous medication and blood plasma also is on the plane. Once in the air, the flight nurse is in complete charge, aided by a trained staff sergeant. Aloft she handles any emergency and does anything a doctor would have to do except operate. Already the men borne aloft from Anzio were feeling better. Removed from the din of battle, their shock condition improved. Jim, for example, mustered sufficient interest in life to ask where he was going. Six hours after he left Anzio he was in a base hospital in North Africa undergoing a delicate brain operation. The evacuation chain does not end at the base hospital overseas. Efficiency and medical factors suggest that the men be kept moving rearward until they are as close to home as possible. Part of the wounded, of course, come home by ship. Pa- Many pt cargo-carryin- trans-ocea- n life-savin- g Air Medal Ribbon Winner ) 9 V 4 f x l'tmiftKft1MTf 'lfJfl rlTMWlltl'ltf MORALE BUILDER Typical of the flight nurses assigned to the ferrying division of the Air Transport command is Lieut. Gerda II. Bouwhuis of Kalamazoo, Mich. In this picture she is giving a wounded soldier some attention that is obviously much appreciated. Lieutenant Bouwhuis wears the Air Medal ribbon in recognition of heroic services performed in the South Paciie war theater. i - cuts of standard widths, yet both of them have seats and bocks at comfortable angles. The lines and proportions are good ar.1 the backs are removable for winter storage. Pattern 253 gives a complete list materials, large diagrams fui cutting all the pieces of the child's chair and NOTE of step-by-st- directions for assembling Pattern lists materials with diagrams 269 for the adult-siz- and chair. Patterns e 15 cents each postpaid, or both patterns for 25 cents. Order from: are MRS. RUTH WYETH SPEARS New York Bedford Hills Drawer 10 Enclose 15 cents for Pattern 253. or 25 cents for Patterns 253 and 2C9. Name-Address-- Our frontlines were marked by long strips of colored cloth laid on the ground, and with colored smoke to guide our airmen during the mass bombing that preceded our breakout from the German ring that held us to the Normandy beachhead. Dive bombers hit it just right. We stood in the barnyard of a French farm and watched them barrel nearly straight down out of the sky. They were bombing about half a mile ahead of where we stood. They came in groups, diving from every direction, perfectly timed, one right after another. Everywhere you looked separate groups of planes were on the way down, or on the way back up, or slanting over for a dive, or circling, circling, circling over our heads, waiting for their turn. The air was full of sharp and distinct sounds of cracking bombs and the heavy rips of the planes' machine guns and the splitting screams of diving wings. It was all fast and furious, but yet distinct, as in a musical show in which you could distinguish throaty tunes and words. And then a new sound gradually droned into our ears, a sound deep and all encompassing with no notes in it just a gigantic faraway surge of doom-liksound. It was the heavies. They came from directly behind us. At first they were the merest dots in the sky. You could see clots of them against the far heavens, too tiny to count individually. They came on with a terrible slowness. They came in flights of 12, three flights to a group and in groups stretched out across the sky. They came in "families" of about 70 planes each. Maybe these gigantic waves were two miles apart, maybe they were 10 miles, I don't know. But I do know they came in a constant and I procession thought it would never end. What the Germans must have Monument to Champion Swapper of This Age Rome's monument to Victor Emmanuel II, king of Italy from 1861 to 1878, is the costliest memorial cf its kind in the world, says Collier's. Built of white marble and embellished with numerous sculptured groups and reliefs as well as a great equestrian statue of the king, this massive structure occupies almost a square block. It is as high as an building, cost $5,000,000 and was under construction for 26 years before its dedication in 1911. e thought sion. is beyond comprehen- Their march across the sky was slow and studied. I've never known a storm, or a machine, or any resolve of man that had about it the aura of such a ghastly relentless-nesYou had the feeling that even had God appeared beseechingly before them in the sky with palms out- ward to persuade them back they would not have had within them the power to turn from their irresistible course. I stood with a little group of men. from colonels ranging "of 'the '.ton f SmhoJ back Stt trencnes wcre all s. i of the armyard and a dugoUte a tin n... WC WC1C i . L' ui kjj . uui i'iQa.u so fascinated by the spectacle over head that it never occurred to us that we might need the foxholes. The first huge flight passed di- rrf 3 rectly over our farmyard and others followed. We spread our feet and leaned far back trying to look straight up, until our steel helmets fell off. We'd cup our fingers around our eyes like field glasses for a clear- er view. and that way, as rhythmically and gruceiu,iy as in a .slow motion waltz. Then suddenly it seemed to change its mind and it swept UDward. st.prtv er and steeper and ever slower until finally it seemed poised motionless on us own black pillar of smoke And then just as slowly turned ovti and dived for the earth. Nothing mem Dy tne slightest. a a "Tronic ar i D"sfiE " "r-- a. the at , . n weii---1- ?!,Yrod star- ESSSSt.Conn. T ' "d use l -" .... Upset Stomach Relieved in 5 minutes or doable money bach WtaeneiceMitomach add csnsai painful, nff lH(f BBS. sour stomach and heiirtbum, dc tora "su' medicines known g prescribe the fastest-actinli ke thow m ines svmptomatic comfort ina Tablets. No lamtiTe. on return ol douj back roar doable or money Jiffy 25o all to us. at druggists. lr 'SMI UUM . FlATtltKS i III ..........nK r.E Al' i ' " GO MUCH FAWINtK , T 1 " Get Your War Some of Brave Fliers Crash With PI a nes Someone shouted that one of the planes was smoking. Yes, we could all see it. A long faint line of black smoke stretched straight for a mile behind one of them. And as we watched there was a gigantic sweep of flame over the plane.- - From nose to tail it disappeared in flame, and it slanted slowly down and banked around the sky in great wide curves, this way cfiSTI larger edition that you see m the sketch. All the pieces are straight high-lev- exactly Flight surgeons inside circle in a little apple orchard behind a ramshackle stone farmhouse of a poor French family who had are tients for the flights left before us. The stonewall in the selected by flight surgeons. front yard had been knocked down Four Kinds of Patients. orby shelling, and through the Patients' general fitness for air chards there were shell craters and travel is the deciding factor and tree limbs knocked off and trunks they are grouped into four medical sliced by bullets. Some enlisted men categories: (1) Mental patients re- sleeping the night before in the attic quiring security accommodations en of the house got the shock of their route; (2) Hospital litter patients lives when the thin floor collapsed who must remain in bed, services and they fell down into the cowshed rendered by other individuals; (3) below. Ambulance patients requiring mediChickens and tame rabbits still cal care en route from other individ- scampered around the farmyard., uals; (4) Troop class patients need- Dead cows lay all around in the ing little medical care en route who fields. can take care of themselves, even in emergencies. The regimental colonel stood in Air evacuation increases enorcenter of the officers and went the once have the mously patients the orders in detail. Battalion over reached coastal receiving hospitals in the United States, either by air- commanders took down notes in craft or by surface shipping. The little books. The colonel said, "Ernie Pyle is same system of screening is emfor this attack ployed at the coastal receiving hos- with the regiment of the batone with be will and was described previously pitals that be so seeing him. you'll as prevailing overseas. Urgency of talions, the patients' conditions, together The officers looked at me and smiled and I felt embarrassed. with their susceptibility to air transThen Maj. Gen. Raymond O. portation are primary considerations. Barton, Fourth division commander, arrived. The colonel Sergt. Walter A. Smith of Springcalled, "Attention!" and evfield, Mass., can testify that the erybody stood rigid until the army doesn't stint on its resources General gave them, "Carry on." when one of its wounded needs special attention. On May 9, 1944, he An enlisted man ran to the was wounded in action in Italy. He mess truck and got a folding reached the United States June 14 in canvas stool for the General to a convoy and entered Baker General sit on. He sat listening intently while the colonel wound up his hospital at Martinsbury, W. Va. An examination by the staff there reinstructions. vealed that immediate surgical atThen the General stepped into tention was necessary. Ashford Gen- the center of the circle. He stood eral hospital at White Sulphur at a slouch on one foot with the Springs, W. Va., had the specialist other leg far out like a brace. He for the type of operation required. looked all around him as he talked. Two mornings later a ferrying di- He didn't talk long. He said somevision plane was at Hagerstown, like this thing Md., when Sergeant Smith arrived "This is one of the finest regiby ambulance. He was placed ments in the American army. It was aboard with a full crew making cer- the last out of France in tain that the solitary patient re- the last regiment war. It was the first regiceived every attention. By noon ment into France in this war. It has that day, the sergeant was on the spearheaded every one of the divioperating table at Ashford General sion's attacks in Normandy. It will hospital receiving the best surgical spearhead this one. For many care that the army has. years this was my regiment and I 7,000 Patients Moved. feel very close to you, and very Ordinarily ferrying division planes proud." The General's lined face was a engaged in air evacuation are completely utilized with all space occu- study in emotion. Sincerity and deep pied. Within the continental United sentiment were in every contour and States, the evacuation by air of the they shone from his eyes. General army's war wounded is the respon- Barton is a man of deep affections. sibility of the ferrying division of the The tragedy of war, both personal Air Transport command. Since this and impersonal, hurts him. At the responsibility was assumed more end his voice almost broke, and I than 7,000 patients have been moved for one had a lump in my throat. without injury to any of, the per- He ended: sonnel involved. "That's all. God bless you and "The air evacuation of sick and good luck." Then we broke up and I went with wounded personnel of the armed forces was pioneered by the medi- one of the battalion commanders. cal services with the AAF and it Word was passed down by field can be considered as one of the phone, radio and liaison men to the measures in very smallest unit of troops that the greatest modern military medicine," Lieut. attack was on. There was still an hour before the Col. Andres G. Oliver, surgeon of the ferrying division comments, "Its bombers, and three hours before the were o move There was rapid and comfortable delivery of infantry no for the mfantry to do but dig h.ng to or a he the patient hospital where a little deeper and wait. A cessa- she will get the best (and most specialized) treatment; or to another tion of motion seemed to come over closer to his home, where his con- the countryside and all its brown- a sense of last valescence will be shorter and far clad inhabitants more pleasant, has become a great minute sitting in silence before the morale factor among our returning holocaust. The first planes of the mass heroes." onslaught came over a little beThus justice is being served when fore 10 a. m. They were the the aircraft, so terrible an instrufighters and dive bombers. The ment of death and destruction, can main road running crosswise in be converted to such humanitarian front of us was their bomb line. functions as air evacuation. nTr l i! Our kickoff infantry had been pulled back a few hundred yards this side of the road. Everyone in the area had been given the strictest orders to be bombin foxholes, for ers can, and do quite excusably, make mistakes. We were still in country so level and with hedgerows so tall there simDlv was no hieh spot either hill or building from where you could get a grandstand view of the bombing as we used to in Sicily and Italy. So one place was as good as another unless you went right up and sat on the bomb line. Having been caught too close to these things before, I compromised and picked a farmyard about 800 yards back of the kickoff line. And before the next two hours had passed I would have given every penny, every desire, every hope I've ever had to have been just another 800 yards further back. where and when each type bomber was to hammer the German ahead of lines Ernie Py.e TO MAkTa . zj'r ylfc far side of that road. graphed sketch of the frontline area, ! J IT IS EASY ruAia t vr'cc v They were to bomb only on the Within two hours they had gathwas filled with specific orders GOING HOME A soldier is carried aboard a plane operated by the page ered up not only this GI Joe but for the grand attack to follow. ferrying division of Air Transport command and in a few minutes will be dozens of other desperately woundeOfficers stood or squatted in a life-savi- and 15 inches wide a good size for little ones now and roomy enough to be comfortable right ud through their early teens. A hammer and saw and screwdriver are all the tools you need to make this chair as well as tbe Pyle broke out cf IN NORMANDY. The great attack, when we :he Normandy beachhead, began in the bright as attacks not at the zero hour of a bleak and mysterious dawn books. in are supposed to start of poor The attack had been delayed from day to day because till sure for known hadn't we final day flving weather, and on the after breakfast whether it was on or off again. y. lawn chair the children and their young visitors. The seat U 102 inches high, 13 inches deen t01.?' of Normandy on A chattering machine gun in a German pillbox, that hadn't yet h, pint-siz- e By Ernie r landing barge to the sandy shore near-deat- is a HEREdelight Ernie Joins Infantry Leader Tops and General Real Released by Western Newspaper Union. d1, loaded them into the planes which were soon winging their way back to England. Two weeks in an American army hospital there and then on June 29 a huge Air Transport Command plane settled down on an airfield on Long Island, N. Y. It was just 19 hours since it had left the British Isles. A day's rest in a hospital near New York then aboard a plane again. And today this GI Joe is convalescing in an army hospital out in the Colorado Rockies, near enough to his home so that Dad and Mom and Sis can come to see him get well. It's several thousand miles from the place where his blood dyed the sands of the French coast to this place where both his body and mind are being healed of the wounds of war but this cycle of life, then life again, is encompassed within the time span of less than four weeks! The reason for this can be summed up in two words: air evacuation. No wonder that Maj. Gen. David N. Grant, air surgeon for the army air forces, was able to declare recently that the army's system of air evacuation of its wounded takes its place with sulfa drugs and blood plasma as "one of the three measures of greatest modern military medicine"! Because of air evacuation, men are alive today who would have perished in the jungles of Makin island or on the Anzio beachhead, and personnel of the air transport command's ferrying division, who have participated in the air evacuation of more than 7,500 war wounded, have no hesitancy in indorsing the air surgeon's statement. It's a part of the army's policy of handling wounded soldiers through a progressive system of unit hospitalization which has been developed to a high degree under the direction of Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk, surgeon general of the army. Because of front-lin- e treatment given American soldiers, more than 97 per cent of the wounded brought from battlefields to evacuation hospitals have been saved. Once the wounded have been treated, they must be sent to hospitals far from the scene of battle where they can rest and recover and, of course, the quickest way to get them there is by airplane. Part of these wounded have been flown from foreign theaters of war to their homeland and thousands of them have been flown from hospitals on the coast to hospitals near their homes where they can convalesce and benefit in spirit from visits of family and friends, for it is a basic army policy to get its wounded soldiers as close to home as possible for the convalescent period. In a recent report on the handling of men wounded during the invasion of France, Maj. Gen. Paul R. Haw-lechief surgeon of the European theater of war, stated: "There has not been the slightest hitch in the hain of evacuation. As a of fhe speed with which theseresult wounded were evacuated from Normandy, the condition of the casualties on arrival in the United Kingdom has been surprisingly fine." To that comment might be added the fact that approximately 4,000 sick and wounded have been returned to this country aboard Air Transport command planes, part of them over regularly scheduled transport services operated by the ferrying division of ATC. Lawn Chair Is Like Mother's and Dad's With Ernie Pyle at the Front Bonds To Help Ax the Axis And Your Strength and Energy Is BcUw Tar of kidIt may b. caiiaed by disorder '"J0 ney function that permit. For truly vast, to accumulate. weak and c people feel tired, when the Wdn. fail to remove w acids and ther waste matter from U .rito. Von may .uffer hrr rheumatic paina. headaches. I P,in";,rin5-lometTme- . nigbu. frequent ' tion with martini? and is"m'p wrong other sign that lomethia the kidneys r bladder. ,,rttipt There should be n. d.ust that , treatment Is wiser than TO' to rely n 'lb Conn's PilU. It la better medicine that has won than on aomethinic lc tnown. Ooon'a have bm ilrM c ed many year. Ar at all wliy t. |