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W. Earl Hall World War II stories, 1944
Letter #36
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Slug-Dr. Anderson -4 By W. EARL HALL Globe-Gazette Managing Editor Letter No. 36 Somewhere in England (By Army Bomber Transit)--Any who labor under the delusion that there's something glamorous about fighting in the front lines in this war should have been with me this morning. I spent 3 hours in one of the largest army general hospitals in the European theater of Operations. I went among the wards and saw hundreds of lads with mangled bodies and faces, awaiting plastic surgery to restore them, as nearly as possible, to their former appearance. I visited the convalescent areas where boys in lounging robes hobbled or play such games as pingpong or "snookers," a type of billiards. I visited a laboratory where artificial eyes were being made from arylic by an amazing process developed by medical scientists in this war. Two dentists--Lt. Col. Donald B. Lankerd of Bradford, Pa., and 1st Lt. W. B. Hall of Lakewood, Ohio,--were doing this, more or less as a professional sideline based on a hand dexterity. I spent nearly an hour in a position of vantage to see white-gowned rubber-gloved surgeons performing their operations on soldiers freshly returned, by train and plane, from the European fighting zone. One of these men of medicine was Maj. Edward N. (Eddie) Anderson, Iowa football coach on leave for his tour of duty with the army medical corps. This former Mason Cityan, who looks forward to his return to coaching, is chief of the urology section in the great hospital. But this morning he was assisting in an operation involving an extensive skin graft to the leg of a soldier who had suffered severe burns. Nearby was a surgeon removing the scar tissue from an upper arm nerve for a lad who had lost the use of his right hand in a shrapnel burst near St. Lo. On another table was a lad with a large section of his jaw shot away. "When our plastic surgeons are through with him," Col. Lester M. Dyke, commanding officer of the hospital, observed, "he will look amazingly like he did before he was hit." Col. Dyke, incidentally, is a native of Orange City, IA., and he received his academic and professional training in medicine at the University of Iowa. His family now lives in Iowa City though he has been in the regular army for some 15 years. In another section of the great institution, spread over 10 acres in a connected series of one-story structures, Maj. Leonard P. Histine heads the neuro-psychiatric work. Maj. Histine, also an Iowa medical graduate, was Iowa athletic physician and trainer before he became superintendant of the asylum for the insane at Mr. Pleasant, which position he was holding when he joined the medical corps 2 years ago at Schick hospital, Clinton, Ia. Another Iowan important in the scheme of things at this hospital is Capt. George Hillson of Clinton, reared at Nashua, the son of Editor Ellison of the Nashua reporter. He is assistant chief of medical service and chief of the officers and women's section. Iowans predominate among the staff of nurses too, probably because the unit had its origin at Clinton. In the evening at the officers' mess, it was like "old home week" for this roving reporter. This I shall remember always, of course. But the thing that will remain longest in my memory will be those lads I saw on the operating tables and in the wards--especially the one I saw drawing on a cigarette through one of his nostrils. This he did because his lower lip and most of his jaw were gone. No, there's no glamor in war for those who do the front-line fighting. -- 30 --
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Slug-Dr. Anderson -4 By W. EARL HALL Globe-Gazette Managing Editor Letter No. 36 Somewhere in England (By Army Bomber Transit)--Any who labor under the delusion that there's something glamorous about fighting in the front lines in this war should have been with me this morning. I spent 3 hours in one of the largest army general hospitals in the European theater of Operations. I went among the wards and saw hundreds of lads with mangled bodies and faces, awaiting plastic surgery to restore them, as nearly as possible, to their former appearance. I visited the convalescent areas where boys in lounging robes hobbled or play such games as pingpong or "snookers," a type of billiards. I visited a laboratory where artificial eyes were being made from arylic by an amazing process developed by medical scientists in this war. Two dentists--Lt. Col. Donald B. Lankerd of Bradford, Pa., and 1st Lt. W. B. Hall of Lakewood, Ohio,--were doing this, more or less as a professional sideline based on a hand dexterity. I spent nearly an hour in a position of vantage to see white-gowned rubber-gloved surgeons performing their operations on soldiers freshly returned, by train and plane, from the European fighting zone. One of these men of medicine was Maj. Edward N. (Eddie) Anderson, Iowa football coach on leave for his tour of duty with the army medical corps. This former Mason Cityan, who looks forward to his return to coaching, is chief of the urology section in the great hospital. But this morning he was assisting in an operation involving an extensive skin graft to the leg of a soldier who had suffered severe burns. Nearby was a surgeon removing the scar tissue from an upper arm nerve for a lad who had lost the use of his right hand in a shrapnel burst near St. Lo. On another table was a lad with a large section of his jaw shot away. "When our plastic surgeons are through with him," Col. Lester M. Dyke, commanding officer of the hospital, observed, "he will look amazingly like he did before he was hit." Col. Dyke, incidentally, is a native of Orange City, IA., and he received his academic and professional training in medicine at the University of Iowa. His family now lives in Iowa City though he has been in the regular army for some 15 years. In another section of the great institution, spread over 10 acres in a connected series of one-story structures, Maj. Leonard P. Histine heads the neuro-psychiatric work. Maj. Histine, also an Iowa medical graduate, was Iowa athletic physician and trainer before he became superintendant of the asylum for the insane at Mr. Pleasant, which position he was holding when he joined the medical corps 2 years ago at Schick hospital, Clinton, Ia. Another Iowan important in the scheme of things at this hospital is Capt. George Hillson of Clinton, reared at Nashua, the son of Editor Ellison of the Nashua reporter. He is assistant chief of medical service and chief of the officers and women's section. Iowans predominate among the staff of nurses too, probably because the unit had its origin at Clinton. In the evening at the officers' mess, it was like "old home week" for this roving reporter. This I shall remember always, of course. But the thing that will remain longest in my memory will be those lads I saw on the operating tables and in the wards--especially the one I saw drawing on a cigarette through one of his nostrils. This he did because his lower lip and most of his jaw were gone. No, there's no glamor in war for those who do the front-line fighting. -- 30 --
World War II Diaries and Letters
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