Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 August 1943 — Page 11

Foosicr Vagabond :

{ sormwres IN SICILY (By Wireless) —It was os bbergasting to lie among a tentful of wounded soldiers recéntly and hear them cuss and beg to be sent right back into the fight, . Hot tourse not all of them do. It depends on the

severity of their wounds, and on their individual personalities, just as it would in peacetime. But I will say that at least a third of the moderately wounded men ask “if they can’t be returned to duty immediately. When I took sick I was with the 45th Division, made up largely of men from Oklahoma and West Texas. « You don’t realize how different certain parts of our country are from others until you see their men set off in a frame, as it ‘vere, in some strange faraway place like this. The men of Oklahoma are drawling and softspoken. They are not smart-alecks. Something of the purity of the soil seems to be in them. 'Even their cussing is simpler and more profound than the torrential obscenities of eastern city men. An Oklajoman of the plains is straight and direct. He is w to criticize and hard to anger, but once he is vinced of the wrong of something, brother, watch out. 5 Ang these quiet men of the 45th, the newest diision over here, have already fought so well they have awn the high praise of the commanding general of the corps of which the division is a part.

Hospital Conversation | IT WAS these men from the farms, ranches and® small towns of Oklahoma who poured through my tent pith their wounds. I lay there and listened for what “each cne would say first. One fellow, seeing a friend, called out, “I think I'm gonna make her.” Meaning he was going to pull through.

Another said, “Have they got beds in the hospital? Lord how I want to go to bed.” Another said, “I'm hungry, but I can't eat anything. I keep getting sick at my stomach. may Another said, as he winced from their ‘probing for

'a deeply burled piece of shrapnel in his leg, “Go ahead,

you're the doc. ‘I can stand it.” Another said, “I'll have to write the old lady tonight and tell her she missed out on that $10,000 again.” * Dying men were brought into our tent; men whose death rattle silenced the conversation and ‘made all the rest of us grave. When u man was almost gone the surgeons would put a piece of gauze over his face. He could breathe through it but we couldn’t see his face well,

One of Them Dies

‘TWICE WITHIN five minutes chaplains came running. One of these occasions haunted me for hours. The man was still semi-conscious. The chaplain knelt down beside him and two ward boys squatted alongside. The chaplain said: “John, I'm going to say a prayer for you.” Somehow this stark announcement hit me like a hammer. He didn’t say, “I'm going to pray for you to get well,” he just said he was going to say a prayer, and it was obvious he meant the final prayer. It was as though he had said, “Brother, you may not know it, but your goose is cooked.” He said a short prayer, and the weak, gasping man tried in vain to repeat the words after him. When he had finished the chaplain said, “John, you're doing fine, you're doing fine.” Then he rose and dashed off on other business, and the ward boys went about their duties. . The dying man was left utterly alone, just lying there on his litter on the ground, lying in an aisle, because the tent was full. Of course it couldn't be otherwise, but the awful aloneness of that man as he went through the last few minutes of his life was what tormented me. I felt like going over and at least holding his hand while he died, but it would have been out of order and I didn’t do it. I wish I had.

Inside Indianapolis By Lowell Nussbaum

PANDEMONIUM REIGNED in the school board offices Wednesday when a mean-looking wasp flew into the building and started annoying Miss Lilly Burres, a secretary in the superintendent's office. It followed her wherever she fled. Then it disappeared.

That was worse — not knowing where it was. Most of the girls in the office were afraid to sit down for fear the wasp might be on their chair. Yesterday, when Miss Burres lifted the cover from her typewriter, there was the wasp again. At last reports, the girls were chipping in to buy Lilly a fly swatter. . . . One of our readers was amused by a classified ad in Tuesday's Times offering: “Babies “and started chicks 4 and 5 weeks aE old. We deliver. Eastside Hatchery.” J. A friend reports seeing a somewhat inconIf gruous Seht on N. Meridian near New York. It was “ia_gray-haired woman wearing neatly fitting black ‘glacks and high heels, carrying a parasol to avoid the sun. SI

Room for Tents

if NELLIE M. COATS, head of ‘the state library catior depa ; read : item about - the state k hotels being sold “out; ugh Labor day andr foned to suggest that, unable to get a room at a ate park hotel, she had gone to the Shades where she had found accommodatiéns. The Shades, privately owned, is on the’same creek as Turkey Run, and Mrs. Coats found the hotel very simple and the food good, she said. There's been agitation for the state to take . it over as another state park. . . Incidentally, we omitted mentioning the other day that there's plenty of room for tenting and for trailers at the state parks, . , Af you like roughing it. . . . Carl Ogle, who went from xX the Star several months ago to the Rough Notes Co., 7 is going to the Miami Herald soon, we hear. . ., Sgt.

In London

LONDON, Aug. 13 (By Wireless) —Another plece of evidence indicating how far the war has turned is that the German radio this week has begun a personal attack on Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, chief of the R. A. F. “bomber command. The, Nazi radio is now building him up as an ogre who is murdering German people. Nothing could more © clearly reveal how much the allied bombing is hurting the Nazis. Only this week I saw English workmen with picks tearing out brick window walls from some buildings, these having been installed. for protection during the blitz on London. While this re‘moval is an index of the changed state of the war, I hope the British will not be too quick io remove all reminders of what the air war against them has been, 4,7 Air war is terrifying and brutal. That is one the best things about it. At last we have the '" means of making cities uninhabitable, spreading . ga blight over ports, industrial areas, airfields, and— yes, why not be frank about it?—population areas, Joe last war is being made so horrible for the civilian population that perhaps its ultimate stupidity w

become clear. W ar a Plaything Too Long

FOR TOO long. war has been a plaything of '

Joseph L. Bubul, formerly with Ernst & Ernst, accountants and who has been stationed at Ft. Harrison, has entered officers candidate school at Ft. Washington, Md.

Grumble Mumble

ONE. OF THE Central-Broad Ripple busses left the downtown section during the rush hour Wednesday evening with’ 70 sweltering passengers crowded aboard. Several of the folks standing near the operator started grumbling about the service. “They don’t run this company right, etc., etc.” said one. “Too many N. Meridian busses and not enough on Central,” said another. “Too many new drivers,” complained a third. This went on for a couple of miles, with the operator politely agreeing and explaining that the bus just ahead had broken down. Finally, when one man said he was through with busses if he had to stand, the operator apologetically murmered: “Sure, but I'l] bet there are a lot of fellows overseas who'd be tickled to come home and get to fight the crowds on busses.” There was nothing but silence from then on. Walkers vs. Riders CHARLES MOSIER, C. of C. safety director who this week proposed that, in the interests of safety, jaywalking pedestrians be arrested, has started receiving: fan mail. One writer (anonymous, of course) suggested that “before Vou start picking on persons obliged to walk, it would ‘be far better to take care of the auto drivers who do not stop at red lights, etc.” The writer suggested going here and there and watching various violations by motorists, then added: “A few hours of this and you would be no old granny in a rocking chair. All you know about pedestrians would go through a needle’s eye. If you and some of your safety buddies hoofed some mileage, you might be competent to advise walkers.” , , . Frank Wallace, the state entomologist, is on the sick list. He’s confined to his home with what's reported to be the “summer flu.”

By Raymond Clapper

Perhaps the mutual destructiveness of war as it is now being waged will goad the world to drive politicians and statesmen out of the historic habit of resorting to this insanity as the handiest panacea for their headaches. When ihe Nazis begin to cry that is the best tip to us to lay it on heavier than ever. For years the German people have been making war on the rest of the Western world, in other

people's territory, and now they are getting a dose}

of it that has long been needed,

Cool, Calculating Way

WHAT I LIKE about our side is the cool, calculating way we are going at ‘this. Nothing is more touching than to see Air Chief Marshal Harris in his home, with the beautiful and young Lady Harris, and with their 2-year-old daughter on his knee. Also there is nothing more terrifying than to be on the other end of that pair of blue eyes when they are turned on photographs of German targets. Nobody

By Ernie Pyle|

fro

Deposits of Tissue and Bone May Help to Save Human Lives in Future

By JANE. STAFFORD Science Service Medical Writer e JUST OVER the medical horizon appears the prospect of a new group of banks, coming to take their place beside the life-saving blood banks, on which surgeons patching up men wounded in battle or serious acidents can some day

draw.

These prospective banks will be ‘made: up of bits of nerves, bones and tendons in assorted sizes to fill the demands for spare parts to replace those lost through injury or damaged by disease. The tendon and bone banks are still in the realm of scientific speculation, though forwardlooking surgeons believe them a possibility. The nerve

banks have reached the rat, cat and monkey stage of laboratory development. Even so, the jump to banks of human nerves is still pretty far in the future, warns Dr. Paul Weiss, University of Chicago zoologist, who, with Dr. A. Cecil Taylor, has developed the experimental] nerve bank

for laboratory animals. Today's patients with nerve injuries or nerve-destroying diseases cannot hope to have an order for a new nerve filled at such a bank. There is a chance, however, that before the war is over, nerve banks might be established for those wounded in battle. Many of you have seen blood banks or pictures of them-—rows of bottles of blood or of plasma or of vacuum bottles with a little dried plasma at the bottom. At Dr. Weiss’ laboratory at the University of Chicago, I saw. the animal nerve bank he is working

on now. » # »

Animal Experiments

IT CONSISTS of a few glass jars in a refrigerator. In each jar are small glass tubes sealed at both ends. Inside each tube are a few bits of chalky-looking

bent rods, a little thicker than 7%

pencil lead and about a quarter to a half-inch long. Those chalky bits are frozen, dried nerves from rats or cats or monkeys. When these chalky bits are rehydrated and grafted by a special technique into gaps 0f nerves in animals of the same species, they heal and promote regeneration much as live nerves do. The re-

- sult is a normally sensitive, work-

ing nerve for the cat or rat or monkey. The nerves were prepared for the nerve bank, somewhat as blood plasma is prepared for its banks, by freezing and drying in vacuum.’ The nerves for the bank are removed from the body under germ-free conditions. - For human: nerve banks, they would be taken’

WELLS TAKES POST WITH HULL|

Indiana University Chief Is

Placed on Foreign Economic Board.

enjoys a vacation with his family at the beach more sta

than Lt. Gen. Carl Spaatz, the ranking American air officer in Africa. In their personal relations these bombing chiefs may be reasonable, kind, shy, and have not more brutal impulses than a country parson. But their job is using this new weapon of mass

i destruction, and they are rightly making it as deadly

and destructive as possible. I am glad to report they are making most, encour-

aging progress. Whatever the wisdom of President Roosevelt a Prime Minister Churchill may lead them to decide

I

4

tos. CollaVers. or fom arms: ad.

legs that had to be amputated. They are. dropped into isopen-

' tane, immersed in liquid nitrogen "at a temperature of 185 degrees

Centigrade below freezing. The

. then transferred to high vacu

maintained by mercury

for about one week of dehydration

over phosphorous pentoxide at 40 degrees Centigrade below freez-

Connects Torn Nerve. , ‘WHEN THEY are to be used to bridge a gdp in a torn nerve, they are rehydrated in vapor at 40 degrees ‘Centigrade below freezing or at room temperature in a special salt solution in vacuum. Then

The fifth and. final chapter of ‘West Point at War,” by Jess Stern, did not arrive in time for this edition. .

they are ready for grafting. Nerve grafting itself is not new. It was tried in the last war, but results were not too good. and by 1920 British ‘surgeons were ad-. vising: it. only as ‘a’ last resort. Lack of a suitable supply of nerves of the right size was one difficulty. Sometimes a piece of a minor nerve was taken from the patient's own body to bridge a gap in a more vital nerve, Efforts were also made to store or preserve nerves in oil, a special salt solutiong alcori or formaldehyde. None of these methods was universally successful, though surgeons have continued in the years between the wars to do some nerve graft-

Jing,

The supply problem will be

‘solved if Dr. Weiss’ banks of dried, frozen nerves can be .adapted to human use. The second difficulty

applies not only to nerve grafts but to ‘the repair of cut nerves

‘when there is no gap between the

cut ends. ‘A nerve often looks like a piece of string’ which you would think could’ easily be joined when cut

“by ‘simply taking a few stitches.

"| Holes in Checks Is Latest Idea

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (U.P).

FEE SEES,

: z

B is

id i

0

. under ‘a microscope,

the counterpart of the blood bank (above), may some day supply fragments for splicing torn nerves. This is the hope tse by Savant experiments ue y . Paul Weiss, Chicago scientist, shown at ‘the right. : :

Actually. of. course, the nerve is not. a" piece. of string ana even though its cut ends may be neatly joined by sutures, this does not - insur, that the nerve will once more: rform its task of carrying im es to and ‘from the brain. : *'n = WHEN A nerve is cut, the fiber ‘onthe far side of the cut dies, but the part between the cut and the ‘brain or spinal cord remains alive and starts sending out new shoots or sprouts of tiny hair-like nerve fibers. If one of these fibers can find its way into the sheath or tube of the dead nerve on the other side of the. cut, it can generally continue on its way to its terminal, Nerves, however, travel blindly. : If much’time elapses before a new fiber finds its ‘way onto the old roadway, the road is likely to become blocked with other tissue cells ‘that have grown over the nerve’s road as the wound heals. This is especially likely to happen, of course; in the case of war wounds. Or’ the tiny sprout of new nerve. fiber may have started in.the wrong direction before the cut ends were sewed together. Unless. - the surgeon operated he could ‘hardly hope to see this and fven with a he might miss it, 3 & MICH. Le tip of the newly growing fiber is probably ulframicroscopic in size. Study- of how these new nerve fibers grow has led Dr. Weiss to discovery of a way to greater success in joining the ‘ends of cut nerves or of grafting a piece of nerve to bridge a gap between the ends. Instead of trying to sew the ends together he splices them with the aid of a sleeve made of a bit of artery. So .far, he has applied his method of nerve splicing only to cuts in animal nerves, but it seems likely that its benefits can be applied to joining cut human nerves

FIXED INCOME GROUP HARD HIT

Living Rise. WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (U. P).

| ~The office of war information said today the burden of mounting live}

ing costs works particular hardship

/ jon the 20,000,000 persons who de-

pend on fixed low wages, pensions,

| allotments and other benefits.

In a ‘survey of fixed income groups, OWI said the real income of these Hersons is shrinking with |

also and, eventually, to aid in the use .of grafts from nerve banks when and if these become estab-

lished for humans. 8 8

Artery. Sleeve Helps

THE ARTERY sleeve helps the newly growing nerve fiber to find its way pattly by providing a tunnel for it in which nerve fluid. collects, forming a superior medium -for the growth of the nerve fiber and its sheath. The most important thing it does, Dr. Weiss believes, is-to furnish a lengthwise. pull on the fiber. Scientists have long speculated on how the blind nerve fibers ever find their way. in the first place to the spot they are supposed to reach in the body. There have been theories . that the region needing to be supplied by a nerve furnished some sort .of chemical or electrical attraction that pulled the nerve in ‘the right direction.” ‘According ‘to Dr, Weiss’ theory, the growing nerve feels its way by contact with the surface along which it travels. The movement of the fibers and their direction are guided by surface forces, something ‘as surface forces guide the spreading of oil on water. In the

. case of nerves, the surface forces

guide by a lengthwise pull. When anything upsets the molecular orientation of the surface over which the nerve travels, so that it does not exert this pull, the growing nerve fiber will wander about at random. An injury in which a nerve was cut might also cause disorientation ‘of thes’ sur-

No Future for

‘Dam Buster’ QUEBEC CITY, Aug. 13 (U. P):

which smashed the Mohne and Eder dams-in Germany. saw only a limited future for dam- raiders today. : “There aren't many dams left,”

“and as for those in Italy, they might be wanted: if we walk in}

Gibson. came here with Prime nicknamed him’ “dam buster.” :

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (U.P). —The petroleum ‘administration and the OPA. were believed today to be announce within a few

Wing. Cmdr. G. P., Gibson said, |

Minister - Winston, Churchill who 4

yg ey ¥ Ry v fo Gt Io : yond cut A UPON 2 : 1 bn + %

TERI REESE ALPE,

& x face so that the tiny tip of new: nerve fiber could ‘not find its; correct road. The artery sleeve helps remedy

" this situation because the blood:

clot inside it exerts a lengthwise: pull as it shrinks in size, This: pull guides the nerve fiber over’ the cut and onto the old nerve: pathway on the Ole? side. | »

Gluing Nerve ; Ents

" DR. WEISS is not the only’ scientist. who has been studying this problem of nerve growth and methods of repairing nerve ine juries. British surgeons have dee veloped a method of using plasma to “glue” ‘the ends of cut nerves together, instead of. sewing them, .and. of fixing nerve grafts in plase ~

+ ‘ma, something as -vegetables are

set “in aspic,” to make the soft, : \ slippery fresh: nerve grafts easier | to handle as well as to make them stay in pMice without stitches. Early this year an American scientist, Dr. David Bodian, of Johns Hopkins university, reported still another way of closing gaps in cut nerves. He cuts loose the nerve sheath and underlying outer bundles of nerve fibers from one end of the cut nerve and slides this sleeve up to meet the ‘other end, to which it is attached by stitches. Now fibers growing from the living end of the nerve

~ are protected by this sleeve from

encroachment by non-nervous tis= sue and enabled to grow down ‘their old pathways to their wtlmate terminations.

STRESSES NEED “FOR FREE PRESS

—The man who led the air raids | : South Americans Told of

American Journalism’s

. NEW YORK, fe: 13 (U. Pl

ambitiovs men, for 00.1ong it has been a convenient in their forthcoming conferences, I hope no political pias to an of the ban on pleasure pe by which politicians and dictators have re- considerations will get /in the way of making the 8 “in: the : 8olv ploy! ; shortest and most: deadly clean-cut job of shattering stifled opposition and : grasped more power. For Germany. into surrender; Fencing with Russia, and

such aggressive men been able to political pressure to divide our blows between Europe