Two things happened almost simultaneously at Little America one morning last week. The Administration Building's gasoline tank shot up in flames and Cameraman Joseph A. Pelter keeled over with a sharp pain in his side. "My surgical instruments!" cried Dr. Louis H. Potaka. "Under the tank!"
Four Byrdmen tossed fire bombs into the flames while the doctor rescued his kit. The fire died. Dr. Potaka stretched Cameraman Pelter on a table, sliced out his appendix. Badly inflamed, it would have burst by afternoon. A long convalescence was ahead of Joseph Pelter. No matter how warm the patient is kept, said Dr. Potaka, a wound heals slowly in frigid Antartica.