CURING WOUNDED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 91, 17 April 1943, Page 7

CURING WOUNDED

RED ARMY METHOD

DRILLING AT HOSPITAL

(By JOSEPH S. VERKHOVTSEV.) MOSCOW. . I walked into the courtyard of a Moscow hospital and stopped in bewilderment. The sign said "hospital" in plain Russian, and the attendants were attired in white— but the men who should have been patients in bed were gathered in groups in the courtyard, practising grenade throwing, taking apart submachine guns, and listening to an officer explaining the mechanism of a trench mortar. Then the officer's voice rang out, "To your wards!" And in a moment the courtyard was emptied.

I entered the building and found normal hospital surroundings, with the surgeons making their rounds. The men I had seen in the courtyard, studying weapons and drilling, now lay in their beds awaiting the doctor's visit. It really was a hospital— but a rather unusual one, of a type which is becoming common in Russia to-day.

Only the lightly wounded and convalescents are admitted to this hospital. Their course of treatment is short, and they can move about. Indeed, the reason why they are sent to this hospital is to develop muscles and limbs injured in battle or, in the case of convalescents, immobilised so long in hospital cures that they have lost their strength and mobility. The exercise which the men receive in courtyard drill is designed to restore movement to affected limbs, and at the same time to increase the patient's fighting skill. Go Back to Battle For these men go back into battle within 30 days after their arrival at the hospital. They are among the 70 per cent of the wounded whom Russian surgeons restore to the Red Army—an additional army (half as large as the total United States armed forces) salvaged from among the 3,000,000 wounded. Russian surgeons pride themselves on the high degree of specialisation in their Army Medical Corps, and the -Moscow military hospital I visited to-day is one of the most specialised. The hospital courtyard takes the appearance of a training camp several times daily. Everything that goes on in the courtyard is supervised by the surgeons, who may forbid their patients to hurl hand grenades, or may order it, as part of the physical therapy cure. The hospital's equipment includes appliances to exercise injured arm and leg muscles, quartz galvaniser and other aids to restoration of longidle limbs. Some of this equipment was sent from America by Russian War Relief, the American agency which collects funds for medical supplies for ' Russia. The best equipment, however, according to the surgeons themselves, is the physical training offered in the courtyard.

Cured and Promoted The hospital, starting the patient on an exercise programme as soon as he enteers the institution, keeps him hard at it. The programme calls for drill and exercise before and after breakfast, an afternoon walk and light work, such as chopping wood or cleaning sidewalks, and physical games after dinner. Typical was the case of Private Mikhail Akulin, who was wounded in the right shoulder. He could neither raise nor stretch his arm when he entered the hospital, and he could not manipulate two fingers. The surgeon prescribed light massage, quartz lamp treatment and curative drill. "How long will I remain here?" asked the wounded man.

"You will be able to handle a rifle in two or three weeks, and you'll throw a hand grenade as expertly as before you were wounded," the surgeon assured him.

I met Akulin on the day he was discharged from the hospital to rejoin his army unit—l 9 days after he entered the hospital. Proudly he showed me his "attestat" (certificate) as an experienced sub-machine-gunner. The certificate spelled a promotion for him. He had earned certificate and promotion in the courtyard of the hospital, in the course of his "cure by drill." — Auckland Star and N.A.N.A.