Leo E. Litwak
IN SHOCK
The war against Germany took a bad tum; several divi–
sions along the Belgian border were overrun; replacements were
needed. So finally my time had come. What a relief to be drafted.
I was ready for war. They took me from a college campus where I
had been allowed to practice the liberal arts and sent me to a camp
in South Carolina.
I had no talent in the medical line but they made me an aid
man. I wore red cross brassards pinned at each shoulder. My steel
helmet was marked with red crosses on a white field. I bore two kits
suspended from a shoulder harness, anchored by a pistol belt. My kits
held gauze bandages, ammonia capsules, small compresses, belly com–
PI'(sses, bandage scissors, merthiolate, sulfa packets, sodium amytol
tablets, a hypodermic needle for blisters, tags for the wounded and
morphine syrettes for shock.
Each day after morning calisthenics, we sat baking in a rubble
field, dusted by South Carolina clay while noncoms lectured us on
the aid man business. I was told all that might happen - from blisters
to amputations - and the proper responses. For blisters draw the fluid,
clean with merthiolate, cushion with gauze. For amputations, apply
a tourniquet, cover the stump, inject morphine to prevent shock. Get
the patient in shock position and keep him warm. I learned the
venereal diseases from clap to lymphogranuloma inguinale. Bare
literacy was an achievement for most. I alone volunteered the right
answers. But no one was fooled. The least literate of them could
draw blood, give injections, apply splints. I had no talent for it.
I couldn't even do a proper job bandaging a compliant buddy simul–
ating a broken clavicle. Instead of a neat mummy, hand strapped to
