HEROIC SURGEONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 11 January 1944, Page 3

HEROIC SURGEONS

WORK IN NEW GUINEA FRONT-LINE OPERATIONS There is something urgent and compelling about an operating theatre. The smallest of them is a fearinspiring no-man’s-land between life and death. If you were to go to the New Guinea battle-front you would see the crudest theatres it is possible to imagine, and you would marvel at them, for they are fountains of the seemingly miraculous, writes H. J. Summers, a staff war correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” It is difficult sometimes to say who are the greater heroes —the men who bear the wounds or the doctors who spend themselves in trying to succour and save them. In the assault on Satelberg, so the story goes, an Australian urged on the doctor who was amputating his foot with: “Keep it up. Doc—you’re doing fine!” Some lads are carried down the track delirious with pain, and all the skill of the surgeon is needed to save their lives. Often, while snooping Japs wait in the night for a gleam of light to direct their fire, doctors continue to work by the light of hand-cupped torches with the flaps of their tents laced down. EXHAUSTED SURGEONS Back along the lines they operate in their squarish hospital tents, but where the bombs are falling or the enemy is strafing they dig deep and work below the level of the ground. Such a subterranean theatre was made at Scarlet Beach, north of Finshhafen, at the height of the fighting for that beachhead. Six muddy steps led down to it; it was about 20ft square, five or six feet deep. A large canvas roofed it, and there was a space of about six inches above the ground on all sides to let in light and air. The operating table was a light collapsible one, with a few raising and lowering gadgets that brought it slightly above the standard of a tall narrow bed. The appointments were small and simple. Sterile drums were at hand; instruments were set out under a white cloth. The air was heavy with the smell of anaesthetic. Here, I knew, men had been won back to life by others whose tired eyes looked out over their masks, but whose supple, gloved fingers never seemed to get weary, On a stretcher in the nearest tent a doctor was resting. Hours of operating the night before had exhausted him. He and his brother surgeons had had no real rest for five days, as the wounded kept pouring in. Japanese had been bombing this hospital, and a patient and an orderly had been killed. On all except one occasion the doctors had been operating when the raiders came over, and they stayed at their job. Every tent in the hospital was riddled with shrapnel. The holes had been covered with pieces of adhesive tape to prevent the rain from coming in and drenching the wounded. Th e colonel in charge of the hospital had been the senior officer on the hospital ship Centaur when it was sunk off the south Queensland coast.

Personal risks for the medical man are, I believe, greater in New Guinea than anywhere else in this war. The nature of the country has made it necessary to push the whole medical service up closer to the point at which men are engaged. In the desert warfare of North Africa main dressing stations were from three to five miles behind the front lines. Motor transport made it possible to get invalids back in a few hours. But in the active areas of New Guinea there are few places from which jeeps can carry ’bounded back. Distances in the jungle must be measured not in miles but in hours of walking. Immediate aid for the stricken comes from those regimental posts that are right up with the fighting units. Those doctors and their staffs are in the thick of it with the troops. They are concerned with storming bleeding, and patching men up for transfer to the advanced dressing station at the rear. Usually they are tough young men. NO MAJOR OPERATIONS Advanced dressing stations on which I happened in New Guinea were not very well equipped. Because they were so far forward, and subject to constant movement, their structure was fragile and makeshift. The necessity for carrying everything on the staff’s back reduced drug stocks and instruments to a minimum. But doctors and their orderly-assis-tants were working wonders witn that little. At the A.D.S. there is usually a supply of blood plasma for transfusions. It is not until the wounded are got farther back, to the Main Dressing Station, however, that any major operation can be performed. The M.D.S. provides those dramatic pictures of doctors working on severely wounded men. Mobile surgical teams are there, with all the equipment necessary for critical work. Abdominal wounds are given priority. Bad limb cases, which may require amputations, are also attended to early. Some members of these surgical teams were big names in peace-time practice. Other younger men have done little but war surgery, and have become expert in it. Soldiers, on leaving the M.D.S., go back to casualty clearing stations, and so on to base hospital. I notice that this system of passing men down along the line of dressing stations is being superseded by the breaking-up of surgical teams, and their despatch with casualty clearing stations, which in recent New Guinea action have been posted well forward. That minimises delay in ski 1 ' ’ treatment. Speed in tendim and evacuating wounded men is the great problem of the front-line doctor. It is essential for the physical and mental wellbeing of the patient himself. It is good for the morale of his comrades. THI FAITHFUL NATIVE There is nothing to distinguish the medical man at the front. His green jungle suit is as grimy as the next fellow’s, his general anpearance after weeks in the wilderness just as unkempt. But when it comes to operating his gown and gloves are as scrupulously clean as those in great citv theatres. In the background of a very hospital in the Rattle 7~ne the faithful native hovers. From afar he watches the mysterious probing and suturing of the bodv he helped to carry miles on a stretcher with such tender care; the body he shielded from the scorching sun with the leaf of a palm tree. I asked one do'“or why Aus. a field surgeries suffered those improvised stretchers of blankets and bamboo poles on which most of our lyingl wounded are carried in. The natives, he said, preferred them to Army stretchers because it was easier for them to manage the handmade litters up and down the rough jungle paths. That was sufficient answer. The gentle, joltless journey of the

wounded in native hands has saved the lives of innumerable badly wounded Australians in New Guinea. It will save many more before the last shot -is fired, and the last wound received on those Northern frontiers.