Free Battle Field Angels by Scott Mcgaugh Page B

advantages more than outweighed these nuisances. For the first time, corpsmen and medics had a battlefield weapon against infection.
    If Rector survived Lipes’s crude surgery, the ground sulfa tablets might give Rector a fighting chance at staving off infection, even considering the primitive surgical tools that would be used in largely unsanitary conditions. Lipes didn’t know how long it would be before Rector reached a proper Navy hospital.
    Lipes’s surgical team included communications officer Franz Hoskins, who would act as an untrained anesthesiologist; yeoman H. F. Wieg, who would hand the bent spoons to Lipes; Ward, who would assist Lipes by positioning the retractors inside Rector to separate tissue and muscle; Ferrall, who would keep track of the sponges and spoons inserted in Rector’s abdomen; and the engineering officer, Lieutenant Charles Manning, who would monitor the patient’s circulation. The surgical team gathered around Rector in the Seadragon ’s sweltering heat and incessant, vibrating hum.
    Lipes pulled on alcohol-drenched gloves whose fingers were too long. He looked like Mickey Mouse in his oversized gloves, a blue blouse taped tightly around his neck, and white duck cap. He inverted a tea strainer and covered it with gauze. It became the patient’s mask, through which Hoskins administered ether. A sailor notched the stopper in the ether bottle so Hoskins could dribble the liquid onto the tea strainer. The ether was so caustic that another sailor smeared petroleum grease on the patient’s face to keep it from burning.
    At 1046 on September 11, 1942, corpsman Wheeler Lipes began operating. The first incision barely creased the skin. Lipes cut deeper, to the fascia, then through the fascia to separate Rector’s stomach muscles, and another incision through the peritoneum. Lipes kept peeling away Rector’s abdomen until his patient’s organs appeared.
    The air in the crowded wardroom grew stale. Then Lipes noticed an odd smell enveloping the surgical team. He looked at Rector’s face and immediately saw that the notch in the ether bottle’s stopper was too large. The ether overdose threatened to anesthetize the surgical team where they stood, while the patient received inconsistent doses. As ether fumes wafted through the compartment, Lipes felt Rector’s stomach muscles tighten, then go limp as Hoskins struggled to drip more ether into the tea strainer. “Give him more!” Lipes ordered as Rector grimaced.
    Once Hoskins had the ether administration under control, Lipes made the last incision. He expected the appendix to pop up, probably blackened with inflammation, but nothing happened. It wasn’t there. Oh, God , thought Lipes, does this guy have situs inversus ? Is his appendix on the opposite side of where it’s supposed to be? Just my luck , as he frantically searched for Rector’s gangrenous appendix. Finally, there it was, coiled, engorged, black, and attached in three places to the caecum, a pouch that forms the first part of the large intestine. Rector’s appendix had adhered to the inside of his abdomen.
    Okay, take it one small cut at a time … don’t rush it … look it over, look again, then make the cut. Slow and careful … don’t hurry it … just like they did it in Philadelphia. … Lipes knew that if he punctured the appendix, Rector would die. If Rector died on the Seadragon , it would be from an appendectomy performed in slow motion, not at the hands of an untrained corpsman frantic to close Rector as quickly as possible.
    One step at a time, take double notes to be sure nothing is left behind. Make sure the seventy sponges we’ve used are accounted for. Make sure the sulfa is ground finely enough that it can be sprinkled inside Rector as we close . Two hours and fifteen minutes after the first incision, Lipes completed the operation. It had taken nearly three times as long as it would have for a practiced surgeon.
    Lipes and the others peeled off their