Medicine: Well, I'll Be Damned

On a battlefield near Metz lay a wounded rifleman, clutching his neck and writhing in agony. His windpipe had been fractured by a mortar shell fragment; he was suffocating. Medical Corpsman Duane N. Kinman, 19, crawled to his aid through heavy machine-gun and mortar fire; 2nd Lieut. Edwin M. Eberling of Lincoln, Neb. joined him.

The medical corpsman, who in peacetime had been an automobile mechanic in College Place, Wash., went to work on the rifleman's throat. He knew, at second hand, the delicate operation that had to be done; his Army instructors had lectured on it, months beforeĀ—a tracheotomy (incision into...

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