SURGEON'S SKILL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 169, 20 July 1942, Page 5

SURGEON'S SKILL

FLYER'S LIFE SAVED REMARKABLE OPERATION (0.C.) SYDNEY, July 15. By a remarkable brain operation two United States army surgeons have saved a young sergeant's life. They removed from the sergeant's skull the nose-cap of a Zero cannonshell and a piece of bone which was pressing on his brain. The doctors, Major Joseph R. Dolce, of Buffalo, New York, and Lieut. Mark Timkin, of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, performed the operation in a field hospital. The patient, Sergeant Clarence Hoehn, 21, of Munster, Texas, was tail-gunner in a bomber which 20 Zero fighters attacked for 40 minutes in the big July 4 raids on Lae. Cannon fire severely wounded Hoehn in the back and left thigh. When the doctors began operating, at 11 p.m. on the night Hoehn was brought back, a wound in his head was thought to be superficial. Pieces of shell were removed from his body wounds, but as an attendant was dressing his head at 2 a.m., Hoehn's arms and legs began to 1 develop paralysis. The doctors were ; called back, and an X-ray revealed the critical injury. The nose-cap, embedded in the back of the skull, was removed with . difficulty. The surgeons discovered that a i piece of bone, larger than the cavity made by the nose-cap, was pressing 1 on Hoehn's brain, and would have caused his death. To remove the piece of bone they had to break it. , With superb skill they chipped the bone, lifted the pieces from the brain, which could be seen pulsing. Almost immediately Hoehn's para- , lysis began to disappear. He is making such good progress that he ' will soon be flying again. i "Please tell my folks at home how lucky I am to have had such won--1 derful doctors," he said.