DOCTOR’S BRAVERY

Southland Times, Issue 24889, 31 October 1942, Page 5

DOCTOR’S BRAVERY

Live Shell Removed From Soldier’s Chest

(Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) WESTERN DESERT, October 26. Without knowledge of whether it would explode or not any minute a surgeon removed a completely concealed anti-tank shell from the chest of a young gunner brought in yesterday in a field ambulance. The operation is believed to be even more remarkable than the reported work of the Russian surgeons in that it was performed by our most forward mobile surgical group working a few miles from the El Alamein line.

Today the gunner, who would have died on the journey to base hospital, is sitting up in bed talking cheerfully between occasional spells of heavy breathing. “I was crawling out from under a reconnaissance tank about 5.30 yesterday morning when something hit me in the back and knocked me to the ground unconscious,” he. told me. “Some time later I came to and it felt as if a terrific weight was forcing me down on my back. My legs and arms were absolutely stiff. I called out and they carried me down here.” The doctor found that the shell, about eight inches long and two inches in diameter, had entered the man’s back near his spine, had been deflected to the left, narrowly missing his heart and had lodged itself in the pleural cavity. His left lung was deflated. All the doctor could see of the shell was the nose tightly enclosed in the skin of the man’s left side. No instrument the doctor had would grip the slippery projectile and to get an instrument under the base of it he had to cut through one rib. Within 20 minutes after the patient was carried to the surgery tent the shell was removed and he had more than an even chance of living. The shell is still thought to be dangerous and is lying in a pit outside the dressing station awaiting identification.

The man is in a tent with several other severely wounded soldiers whose chances of living would have been slight without the prompt attention they have been given by the Mobile Group which came forward on the night of the big attack and attended to head, chest and abdominal wounds. The doctor and his anaesthetist and their orderlies worked through the noise of an artillery' barrage and dive-bombing and the constant roar of traffic passing their desert surgery. The battle began at 10 p.m. and at midnight the first of a number of major operations they made in 24 hours began. A small mobile surgical group working with forward dressing stations is a new development in medical work.