LIVE SHELL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1942, Page 3

LIVE SHELL

REMOVED FROM GUNNER’S CHEST REMARKABLE OPERATION. IN DESERT BATTLE STATION. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) WESTERN DESERT, October 26. _ Without knowledge ■of whether it would explode at any minute, a surgeon, Major Donald McKenzie, of Auckland, removed completely a 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 Russian surgeons, in that it was performed by our most mobile forward surgical group working a few miles from the El Alamein line. Today the gunner, who would have died on the journey to the 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.” Major McKenzie found that a shell about eight inches long and two inches in diameter had entered the man’s back near his spine and had been deflected to the left, narrowly missing his heart. 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 head, chest and abdominal wounds. The doctor and his anaesthetist and their orderlies worked through the noise of an artillery barrage, dive-bombing and the constant roar of traffic passing their desert surgery. The battle began at 10, and at midnight the first of a number of major operations they performed in 24 hours began. This small mobile surgical group, working with forward dressing stations, is a new development in medical work.