Free Battle Field Angels by Scott Mcgaugh

watch for you.” Two hours later Lipes returned.
    “Jeez, Doc, my belly’s really hurting. Bad. Gimme me a coupla pills or some mineral oil or somethin’. Maybe I just need to take a dump.” 10
    Lipes paused as a frown creased his face. “Why don’t you just get in this bunk and we’ll see how you do.” The corpsman was thinking several moves ahead:
    “There isn’t a qualified physician for more than a thousand miles. We’re in the middle of the South China Sea in Jap waters and I’ve got a sailor beginning to act like he has appendicitis. He’s pulling his right leg up toward his chest, trying to ease the pain that looks like it’s localized on his right side.”
     
    When Lipes touched Rector’s abdomen, the crewman nearly jumped out of his bunk. Sailors heard his scream several compartments away.
    Lipes left to see the captain. “What do you think is wrong with him?” Ferrall asked.
    The corpsman had assisted with appendectomies before transferring to the submarine service. “I think he has appendicitis. He needs an appendectomy.”
    Ferrall and Executive Officer Norvell Ward blanched. They were weeks away from a friendly port, and appendectomies even in hospitals were far from routine. Deadly infections were common in the prepenicillin era of 1942. Ferrall, Ward, and Lipes headed for the bunk where the sailor squirmed in pain. No position brought relief as Rector looked up at concerned faces. Ferrall turned to Lipes. “What are you going to do?”
    “Sir, I can’t do anything,” Lipes replied.
    “Son, we’re out here in enemy waters. We do the best we can every day. When I fire torpedoes, I know sometimes they’ll miss. But we all have a job to do. You tell me this sailor’s got appendicitis. Now, can you do an appendectomy or not?”
    Only the engines’ rumble through the metal deck and a distant clang broke the lengthening silence.
    “Yes, sir, I can do it, but everything is against us. Our chances are slim. But if that’s what I’m ordered to do, that’s what I’ll do,” said Lipes as he, Ferrall, and Ward looked down at Rector, his face red with fever.
    “Son, what do you think?” Ferrall asked Rector.
    “Whatever the doc feels has to be done, it’s okay with me,” said the sweating Kansas native.
    Only twenty-three years old, Lipes’s heart pounded as he considered his orders. No one had performed an appendectomy on a submarine before, largely because no surgeons served on them. A corpsman with modest basic training stood between Rector and a ruptured appendix that would kill him. Worse, Lipes realized he lacked the tools he had seen surgeons use when he had assisted in the Philadelphia Naval hospital.
    Color drained from his face as he looked around the Seadragon ’s cramped officers’ wardroom. It was so small, even the diminutive Lipes could not stand up straight. Lipes lacked the necessary equipment to take Rector’s blood pressure. There was no way to do a blood count to assess the patient’s condition. No intravenous fluid. No equipment to administer anesthesia. Wheeler Lipes’s patient faced death unless he operated, yet the corpsman lacked the most basic equipment found in many physicians’ offices.
    Lipes, though, possessed an intuitive gift, intelligence, and a passion for learning. Years earlier, he had bought The Merck Manual , a massive technical guide to the human body. He considered it one of the greatest books ever published, second only to the Bible.
    Captain Ferrall ordered the Seadragon down to one hundred twenty feet, to get below the stormy South China Sea swells. The Seadragon ’s helmsmen would have to keep the submarine perfectly level for as long as the surgery required. Lipes began to improvise. A desk drawer pulled out extended the wardroom table to accommodate the six-foot-tall Rector. Sailors rigged floodlights, normally used for night loading, for added illumination in the dim wardroom. Others piled battle lanterns and flashlights on a nearby