A Cold Sweat

A.M.A. delegates heard blunt words from an outspoken Navy surgeon recently returned from Korea. There, said Captain Eugene R. Hering, "Our woeful lack of military surgeons has again been demonstrated . . . Our greatest weakness [is] the lack of medical officers who are psychologically prepared, physically toughened, professionally capable and sufficiently aware of the military aspect of any given campaign."

As an example of what doctors must face in war, Captain Hering cited the fighting withdrawal of the 1st Marine Division, with which he was serving as division surgeon, from the Changjin Reservoir to Hungnam last December. The conditions: "Thirty degrees below zero weather with no fires or warming tents, frozen C rations for food, snow for water, and the hills lined with screaming Chinese thousands for 16 bloody miles."

"The division suffered 2,400 cases of frostbite during the withdrawal," said Captain Bering. "We had good clothing in sufficient quantity, and the men had been indoctrinated, although they were not trained Arctic troops by any means. But the very nature of that fight made it impossible for the troops to take all precautions. Men would struggle up the steep hills to drive out the Chinese and protect the column of vehicles; their feet would perspire, then they would be pinned down and the sweat would turn to ice. They had no facilities for drying socks and even changing them must have been difficult. Men arrived in Hagaru [a clearing station] with a shell of ice around their feet inside their boots.

"Fifteen hundred were evacuated . . . by air, the remaining [cases] either being minor, or the men refused to turn in, despite the pain and danger of permanent injury, in their desire to fight their way out with their comrades. This sorting of frostbite . . . was almost brutally done, as we needed every man capable of bearing a rifle on the fight down [to Hungnam], I personally passed on all controversial cases, using as my criteria the feet of the 5th Regimental surgeon. He refused to be evacuated although he could not walk without great pain, but insisted on riding in an ambulance with his medical section. Those worse than he were evacuated; those less [severe] fought their way back ...

"Not over 3% of the total [2,400] had any permanent loss of substance" (i.e., toes or other tissue). In all, Captain Hering said, the 1st Marine Division's faithful medics handled 6,000 casualties in twelve days.

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