None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II

by Anthony A. Goodman

  “Yessir,” the lieutenant said, still looking over toward the private with the rifle, “but I’m not sure how much use he’s gonna be. Hang on a second.”

  Cantrell jogged back to the field and spoke with the private. Then he came back and jumped into the back of the jeep with the MP and O’Reilly. The three of them roared up the road as the group slogged back to their trucks.

  And then they were alone.

  In a matter of minutes, the quiet made everyone very uneasy. Even nature’s sounds had disappeared into the stillness. Everyone pitched in to ferry supplies from their vehicle over to the ambulance truck and started organizing a makeshift hospital.

  Again, Hamm took charge.

  “Look, there’s no way we’re going to be able to drive these trucks into that field to get closer to those wounded guys. We’ll just get bogged down for sure.”

  “Where should we set up?” McClintock asked.

  “Well, there’s a whole area over there with clusters of boulders, probably useful for shelter and defense.” Hamm said.

  “And a few depressions in the ground over there,” Higgenson said pointing, “that we could deepen with some heavy digging. Make trenches and fox holes.”

  “And we’ll be glad to have your strong young back digging with us, Dick,” McClintock said.

  So Hamm, McClintock, Molly, Higgenson and Schneider walked the hundred yards to assess the damage. The wounded men were clustered together in a small depression in the earth, and they were all in bad shape. It was amazing they had lived so long.

  Hamm delegated the cases, and they split up. The one uninjured private left to guard them with his lone rifle never looked up or reacted. Nor did he offer to help at all. So they left him alone. His glassy-eyed gaze into the distance suggested he would be of little use anyway. The “thousand-yard stare” they called it.

  Higgenson started IVs while Hamm and Schneider catalogued the injuries. McClintock began organizing the anesthesia supplies into working units for each of the wounded. Molly was preparing each of the surgical packs for the upcoming operations.

  “I don’t know if we have enough surgical packs for six cases here.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to get to do six cases,” Hamm said, shaking his head at the severity of the injuries. “Let’s just get going, one case at a time, and do the best we can.”

  Higgenson finished setting up an IV with plasma on the first man and hung it from the tree branch over the man’s head. At a field hospital, the GI would have been on the operating table already, but there was nothing Hamm could do just then in that muddy field to speed things up.

  “This guy’s got a single gun shot wound to the abdomen. Seems stable, but…” Hamm said to Molly, who had stopped for a moment to apply a dressing and some sulfur powder to the wound.

  Hamm looked at the man and could picture the bullet holes in the intestines leaking fecal contamination into the peritoneal cavity. Every hour without surgical treatment would bring this man closer to a painful death from peritonitis.

  Schneider was looking at another soldier. “Jesus! This poor guy’s peppered. Seven or eight abdominal holes and one chest wound. I don’t know….” Helpless to do anything but give morphine to the man, Schneider moved on.

  Hamm set about assessing and treating the next man’s injuries: dressing the wounds and starting some plasma. They had no penicillin in their packs. All of that precious drug was with his main supply in the trucks that had left the field hospital hours earlier. He shook his head wearily, feeling terribly helpless.

  Molly knelt next to Schneider as he bent over yet another wounded man. A boy, really. The body was propped against a tree. He wasn’t moving, and his eyes were shut. Schneider shook his head. “He’s dead.”

  Molly followed Schneider to another GI who was alive, and writhing. Schneider knelt and pulled away the shreds of the GI’s uniform. Both he and Molly gasped involuntarily. Even after all they had seen in the past many months, they still had to forcibly stop themselves from shutting their eyes against the terrible sight. The poor man had been opened from his pubis to his chest. His intestines had spilled out onto the ground like the gut pile of a butchered deer. There were bullet holes throughout the intestines, and a foamy green bile-stained liquid dripped onto the ground. Schneider was reminded of the froth he once saw at the edges of a horse’s mouth after it had eaten ripe grass, especially with the dirt and debris sticking to the once glassy surface of his wounds. Flies crawled over the man’s intestines. Although Molly and Schneider impotently waved the flies away, the flies won the battle. The man had a large bullet hole in his chest, and fine pink froth bubbled there.

  Schneider shook his head in despair. He didn’t try to dress or cover the wound. The man was still writhing and groaning, his voice taught and shrill. His eyes were pleading with Schneider at first. Then a look of relief came over him as if his salvation were suddenly at hand. As if Schneider could possibly help him. The young man managed a brave smile for Molly and in a hoarse whisper, said, “Ma’am.”

  Schneider reached into his kit and took out two Syrettes of morphine. He pulled both needle covers off at once with his teeth then injected the morphine into the man’s thigh, right through the pants. He started to get up and then thought better of it. He reached back into his kit and got out another morphine Syrette. He looked at Molly for a moment, then gave the man a third shot. Schneider took off his own field jacket and covered the soldier, who was now shivering as shock mercifully began to deepen and send the poor man into a quiet, gentle, pre-death coma; his experience of the pain diminishing with each passing minute as the morphine took over his brain.

  Schneider stood and moved on to the next soldier who had a single abdominal gunshot wound. Molly lingered behind for a moment, holding the dying man’s hand. When Schneider looked back, though he didn’t want to look at the man again, the GI didn’t seem to be breathing.

  Of the six wounded men, three of them might survive long enough for surgery.

  Two hours later, inside the ambulance and it’s jury-rigged operating room, Hamm and Schneider were just finishing the third of the primitive field operations. In spite of the cold and dampness outside, the small space inside the ambulance truck became quickly hot and dank with the sweat and breath of the whole surgical team and the patients. The smell of open-drop ether was overwhelming.

  The first operation had been the single gunshot wound to the abdomen. Schneider was operating with Hamm assisting. Higgenson was holding a flashlight in one hand and helping pull on an abdominal retractor with the other.

  Schneider sutured six holes in the small intestine and one in the colon, all made by a single bullet.

  “Here’s the goddamned bullet,” Schneider said as he tossed the mangled piece of lead on the floor. “One shot, and look at all this damage!”

  Higgenson was leaning in close so he could see every step in the procedure.

  As Schneider sewed shut the seventh hole, he looked up at Hamm, and his eyes crinkled over his mask.

  “So, Dick,” he said, “we ready to close?”

  “Yes, sir. Guess so.”

  Schneider and Hamm nodded to each other.

  “Okay, wrong answer. We close now and he’ll be dead before dawn.” Schneider said. “First rule in gun shot wounds. If you can find the bullet free in the abdominal cavity, there’s got to be an even number of holes. In, out. In, out. Right? So far, we’ve found and repaired only seven. We close this guy now, he’s going to leak intestinal fluid from another hole we missed, and he’ll be dead before morning.”

  Higgenson narrowed his eyes in thought. Then he said, “Of course, I get it.”

  “Good man,” McClintock said, joining in the teaching session.

  “And so if the bullet is still inside the intestine, there’s got to be an odd number, right?” Higgenson asked.

  “Yeah,” Hamm said, “but don’t get cocky. See, you can find an even number of holes and still be missing two more. Or fou
r. So you need to run the bowel. Examine every inch of it from the jejunum to the rectum. And then back again to be doubly sure. And the stomach and duodenum, too.”

  Schneider was running the bowel as they spoke.

  “Here it is, tucked behind the duodenal ligament. Could have missed that easily. Good thing I learned to count.”

  Hamm continued to teach as Schneider finished the operation.

  “There’s remarkably little contamination considering the magnitude of the injuries. But still, this man’s going to need a colostomy to protect a repair job Steve did on his lacerated colon. We’ll put him back together in a couple of months if he heals up all right.”

  Hamm and Schneider sewed the other holes closed, and used a major portion of what saline they had left to clean out the peritoneal cavity.

  Between cases, Higgenson was assigned to do a lot of the minor surgical procedures required by the wounded men. There was also a lot of debriding of skin and muscle wounds, as well as suturing to be done. Higgenson did much of it, and he did it beautifully and meticulously. He took a lot of the work load off the surgeons.

  “Y’all going to be a fine surgeon one day, Dick,” McClintock said as they were moving the new patient onto the operating cot.

  “Thank you sir. Seems like a long way off from here.”

  “It’ll fly by, son. Don’t y’all worry.”

  The second survivor had penetrating wounds of the chest. But the insertion of chest tubes did not stop all the bleeding or the air leak. So with some sense of disappointment, they had to open his chest to repair the holes in the man’s lung, and stop a few arterial bleeders. But, this man, too, survived.

  “Man, these boys are sure ‘nuff tough!” McClintock said. “They’re made of fine stuff, if you ask me.”

  “Sho ‘nuff are,” Schneider said, imitating McClintock perfectly.

  “What about knife wounds, sir?” Higgenson asked.

  “What about them?” Schneider said.

  “Doesn’t seem as if counting holes would work with those.”

  “You’re going places, Dick. Absolutely right. With knives—or bayonets—it’s a whole different ball game. You just have to run the bowl and not miss anything.” Schneider turned to McClintock and said, “I think we got some talent here, Ted. What do you think?”

  “I’m just hoping he doesn’t get too crazy and want to become a surgeon.”

  The last man also had a gunshot wound of the abdomen. He had been saved for last, because it was a single through-and-through wound, with little bleeding. The man was the most stable, so he could wait the longest. Back at Charlie-7, all three would have had their operations at once with three separate teams. Not here.

  All this time, Molly had been the scrub nurse, handing instruments and sorting out the many kinds of sutures for closing the intestinal wounds, the lung wounds, the arterial and venous wounds; and the giant stay-sutures—almost miniature ropes—that the surgeons used to close the abdominal walls and the chest.

  She worked quietly and efficiently, and didn’t participate in the OR banter. Between cases, she went off on her own to gather the dirty equipment, to wash and sterilize them in their primitive cooker so that she would be ready on time as soon as one patient was off the table and the next moved into place and asleep.

  By the time they finished the last operation, it was full dark. They had been operating under the muted light of flashlights hand-held by Higgenson. The key was to be able to see well enough to complete the operation, without having so much light that they made targets for the enemy they suspected was out there. Higgenson’s shoulders and back ached, as did the hand that held the big abdominal retractors.

  Schneider arched his back painfully and stretched his arms. Everything seemed to hurt, but he said nothing. It would have been a sin, he thought, to complain in the presence of these young wounded men. He moved out of the ambulance and stepped into the chilly wet night, enjoying the fresh air and the room to breathe.

  Schneider suddenly sensed someone at his back. Before he could turn around, the private with the thousand-yard stare draped Schneider’s field jacket over Schneider’s shoulders, then without a word, turned and walked back to his post. Molly came up right behind Schneider.

  She watched the private walk away, fading into the darkness until he was gone altogether. The two looked at each other. Her green eyes were so sad, sadder than he had seen her in a long time.

  It was three o’clock in the morning by the time the group had the ambulance converted from an OR back to be able to carry the wounded in the side racks along the walls. They tied the tent and some cases of supplies to the roof and the hood. The rest of the equipment all went into the other truck. Still, there wasn’t room enough for all of them to sleep inside, at least not without a lot of crushing and shoving.

  Hamm rubbed his burning eyes and said, “I can’t decide whether to move out right away and try to find the new field hospital, or wait here until light.”

  “I think we should move on now,” McClintock said. “The longer we’re all away from protection, the riskier it gets. Besides, we ought to get these casualties to the field hospital as soon as we can. They’re going to need plasma and more IVs and penicillin too if they’re gonna survive all this shit.”

  Molly, nodded her head and began to agree with Ted, when she was interrupted by Schneider.

  “I don’t know, moving around in the dark might be a hell of a lot more dangerous. Easy to get lost. We could get shot by our own guys if they’re spooked enough. And who wouldn’t be spooked out here? I think we should wait it out right where we are. There’s been no firing for a few hours. Let’s just keep our voices down and our lights out and bed down here.”

  Molly opened her mouth to speak, but was again cut off.

  “I’m with Steve,” Hamm said. “And I think we should dig some deeper holes in the cover of the trees and rocks over there and stay out of the truck. It’s too damned good a target. Maybe drive down over there,” he said, pointing east along the road, “to where we can pull up close to some cover, but still not sleep in the truck.”

  “You’re right,” Schneider said. “I don’t want to be trapped in that ambulance either. And I think the casualties should be in the fox holes with us. If the truck is too dangerous for us, it’s too dangerous for them.”

  Molly hadn’t been able to say anything yet. She was incredulous that nobody seemed to care what she thought. But, everybody there outranked her. “Well, I think—”

  “OK, let’s do it,” Hamm said, interrupting her. “Get everyone on board, and we’ll pull on down to those trees over there.”

  “Well, shit!” Molly said.

  “What?” Hamm said.

  “I don’t get a vote here?”

  Hamm paused, then took a breath. “No, Molly. Actually nobody gets a vote here but me. I’m the senior medical officer and I was just trolling for ideas. Now, I’ve heard enough, and I’ve made a decision.”

  Molly pursed her lips and with a curt, “Yes, sir,” as she stomped off to the ambulance to gather her things.

  There were a few very tense minutes of silence, no one willing to cross either Hamm or Molly. Then everyone just jumped aboard, with Schneider scrambling not to be left behind. They ferried the trucks and the equipment and all the personnel a few hundred yards down the road toward Caen, where they found what looked like better cover for the night. It took only a few minutes, even in the inky blackness.

  Then they got settled in again quickly. Their lonely shell-shocked private took his rifle and poncho and set off to find a place to guard his medical team and their wounded soldiers. The bodies of the dead had been wrapped in their ponchos and tied to the roofs of the two vehicles.

  The three fresh post-op patients were carefully unloaded from the ambulance and carried far away to the deepest, best protected site they could find. They were completely surrounded by boulders. Higgenson camouflaged them with branches and leaves. Then he stood guard as their nur
se and unarmed guardian.

  Then the team unloaded their gear, clustering under the trees in the lee of the truck. They were only about twenty yards from Higgenson and his post-op GIs, yet all of them could just barely see each other in the darkness. It was foolish to be huddled so close together. A single mortar would have taken out everyone at once. But there was something about the darkness, and the cold, not to mention the Jerries in the area that made them instinctively huddle, in spite of their training.

  Once they were settled in, Schneider took Molly’s elbow and said, “Take this.” He held the .45 out to her. “Put it in your shoulder pack. You’re certainly a lot better shot than I am.”

  Molly took the weapon and said, “Actually, I am. But this thing won’t do us much good beyond a few yards. And it might do a lot of harm. Like the muzzle flashes giving away our position. But you never know.”

  She shrugged, then checked the clip and rammed it home. She also checked that the safety was on and finally tucked the weapon into her bag.

  Hamm watched, and weighed whether he should resist, but as he began to challenge Molly again, Ted grabbed his elbow and said, “You two have had enough angst for one night. Let it go, Hamm. She’s probably the best shot on the team anyway.”

  Hamm could barely control his anger. He took a long breath and with a strained voice said, “Okay, everyone. Let’s get away from these trucks and find some more rocks.”

  At Hamm’s orders, they moved off away from the tempting targets made by the two vehicles, and found another natural rock formation a few yards beyond the wounded men and Higgenson.

  “Let’s just deepen this a bit, and settle down,” he said.

  Hamm had just dropped into the last of the trenches behind the rocks he’d dug with McClintock and Schneider when machine-gun fire tore the trees above them into splinters. McClintock tumbled in on top of Hamm, then rolled to his side and pressed his back against the rocky wall.