Surgeon in Burma

Gordon S. Seagrave (TIME, April 20) was a medical missionary in Burma when the Japanese invasion came. His super-manful feats of surgery in the ensuing bloody weeks are well and widely known. When Burma was evacuated by the Allied forces, Dr. (now Major) Seagrave shared General Stilwell's terrible retreat into India. The following are excerpts from a letter which he wrote from Delhi to his wife, and which she sent to TIME:

"We were ordered to follow the Chinese Sixth Army down to Loilem and left some time in February. When we got there they told us we would have to serve the whole army, not just one division. We went back and set up a base hospital in Loilem--bamboo huts and wards on a hill out of town, a lovely joint. . . .

"Dr. Geren, Tun Shein and I. with Ko Nyunt and a Chinese college boy. Low Wang, and twelve nurses started off for Pyinmana. We got to Case's [Baptist Missionary Bray ton C. Case, founder of an agricultural school at Pyinmana] place while he was away late at night. The Friends' Ambulance Unit arrived almost immediately and while they went off for casualties we set up. They got back after we had managed to get two hours' sleep and from then on we worked steadily, with only two hours' rest, for 36 hours. Case moved us off to a child welfare house in town. We had just begun operating there when a lot of Jap planes went over. . . .

"While we were operating after the bombing--I had four operating tables going at once with nurses finishing the operations after I had done the most essential part, and Koi [one of the nurses] operating on her own--General Stilwell came in and watched us without our knowing he was there. As soon as he got to Maymyo he sent down the only U.S. Army medical man he had in Burma, a dentist named Captain (now Major) Donald M. O'Hara, and telegraphed Chungking to send down an abdominal surgeon trained at the Mayo Clinic, a Captain John Grindlay, to work with me. Grindlay, after having Koi, Kyang Lewi and Maru Bauk assist him at various particularly bad cases, adopted the whole crowd, and to this day tells everyone they are the best trained nurses he ever saw. . . .

"My first brain cases, etc. were really interesting. The first one had a bullet enter the top of his head and go three inches into his brain. I trephined a huge opening in his skull, opened up the dura mater, washed out a lot of shattered brains and put in a vaseline gauze drain. That night we had to move and took him along with us to a bungalow on a hill. Every time bombers came over, this patient got up and ran half a mile. After five days, during which he had no fever and was walking around everywhere--drain out--we had to send him back.

"Then one day they brought in another just like him, but with lots of other wounds all over his body. I was sure he would die on the table, and there were lots of others who needed immediate operation so I told them to carry him out and let him die in peace. After all the other cases were done, one of the nurses wanted to know what I was going to do for the patient they had dumped behind the kitchen, so I said that if he was still alive to bring him in. I did his brains the same way, fixed up all his other wounds, and three days later we shipped him off in good condition.

"We had loads of variety. There were some quiet spells, but usually we began operating at midnight and on until 8 or 10 in the morning, then the nurses and I would take all the bloody operating stuff to a stream, wash it out, and Emily would re-sterilize it for use that night. I got four scratches, two on each foot, dropping boxes on myself while moving and then getting streptococcus sloughs from infected patients' blood and pus dropping onto my feet, and they took forever to heal. Yesterday was the first day I didn't have to have a dressing on my right foot for three months.

"We kept moving back. . . .

"About two days later, they decided to abandon Burma and we started off with General Stilwell's crowd. We drove about 150 miles west in the trucks and jeeps and then had to abandon them one by one if they got stalled even for a few moments. We were ordered to save out only what each one thought he could carry up the Chin Hills and abandon the trucks. I knew we would have to take care of all the sick in the company of 105 who followed General Stilwell out, so I ordered each nurse to carry some first-aid articles in addition to her own stuff. So they each took out two jackets, two longyis and a sheet. They had one blanket to each three. We had 19 nurses and seven Friends' Ambulance Unit men and seven of the rest of us, by this time.

"I pretty nearly died that first day, it was so ghastly hot. Next day, and for three more days, we had to march down the middle of a stream. Sand got into our shoes and socks and my sores got four times as big as they had been. Then we had three days on rafts made of rotten bamboos. My bed was six inches under water. Then we crossed the Chindwin and started up and down some awfully steep hills, some 7,000 feet high. I had had malaria every couple of weeks since December and the day we reached the Assam border I couldn't have walked another step. When we reached civilization I was down to 50% hemoglobin, had lost 35 pounds and my legs were swollen to the knees. . . .

"I hope you approve of my joining the Army."

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