OPERATION WITH JACK-KNIFE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 3, 1 December 1944, Page 5

OPERATION WITH JACK-KNIFE

LONDON, Nov. 30. With mortar shells whining overhead an amateur surgeon performed one of the most delicate operations, that of tracheotomy (an incision of the windpipe), with only a jack-knife and a fountain pen on the- battlefield near Metz states the Ileuter correspondent with the American Third Army. A rifleman was hit in the throat by a mortar shell and the fragment was suffocating him. Private Kinman, aged 19 a medical aid man from Washington, with a helper crawled through the barrage to the rifleman. Kinman with a jack-knife cut into the throat, avoiding the, jugular vein. He made one-and-a-half-inch incision in the windpipe below the wound, then took a fountain pen from the wounded man and, putting the rounded end jn the windpipe incision, told him: "Keep it there and you will bo -0. K." A passing tank took the rifleman to the rear, where the pen was removed and a tracheotomy tube inserted.