Surgeon for a Day

Aboard a U.S. submarine in enemy waters of the Pacific, Seaman Dean Rector was down with acute appendicitis. The nearest naval surgeon was thousands of miles away. Pharmacist's Mate Wheller Lipes watched Rector's temperature rise to 106, knew his only hope was an operation. Said Lipes: "I've watched doctors do appendectomies. I think I could do it. . . . What do you say?"

Groaned Rector: "Let's get going." In the wardroom, about the size of a Pullman drawing room, Rector stretched out on the table beneath a floodlight ordinarily used for loading. The pharmacist's mate and assisting officers pulled on reversed pajama tops, masked their faces with gauze. From end to end the submarine, riding deep under the surface, was tense. Men stood by the diving planes to keep her steady. In the galley the cook kept water boiling in his kettles for sterilizing.

For an anesthetic cone, Lipes used a tea strainer through which the patient breathed ether; for the incision, a broken-handled scalpel from the ship's medicine chest; for antiseptic, alcohol drained from torpedoes; for muscle retractors (to hold the incision open), bent tablespoons. Oversize rubber gloves encumbered Lipes. After cutting through layers of muscle, he took 20 minutes to find the appendix. "I think I've got it," Lipes finally whispered. "It's curled around the blind gut. . . . More flashlights, another battle lantern."

Ether fumes eddied through the crowded wardroom. The patient grimaced. "More ether," said Lipes. Two hours and a half after the operation started, Lipes took the last catgut stitch. At that moment the ether gave out.

Thirteen days later Rector was back on duty manning the submarine's battle phones. As souvenirs he had a handful of bent spoons and, preserved in alcohol, the only appendix known to have been removed undersea in enemy waters.

Last week Pharmacist's Mate Lipes was on furlough visiting his wife in Upper Darby, Pa. Of his first surgical patient he said modestly: "He had more nerve than I did."

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