Medicine: Bullet Lou Ricochets

When Louis Joseph Kirn was a midshipman, he played halfback for the Navy against Knute Rockne's iron Notre Dame elevens and, despite a succession of banged-up joints, punched opponents' lines so hard that he won the nickname of "Bullet Lou." On Guadalcanal he commanded a dive-bomber squadron and flew missions around the clock. Kirn was not badly hurt when he had to ditch his plane in the Pacific, was unscathed in two torpe-doings of the carrier Saratoga. On Pentagon duty last February, Captain Kirn, 46, was a wiry 168 lbs., and rated himself "the...

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