Under Dr. Gordon Seagrave, U.S. physicians and native nurses speed the war against Japan

COL. GORDON SEAGRAVE, 4TH GENERATION OF MISSIONARIES TO BURMA.

    When he was 5 years old Gordon Stifler Seagrave told his parents, Baptist missionariesto Burma, that he was going to be a medical missionary. Twenty years later he was back in Burma with a few discardedsurgical instruments from Johns Hopkins setting up a hospital of his own. The story of that project is told in hisrecent book, Burma Surgeon (Norton, $3), up to the time he and his staff joined General Stilwell in thehistoric hike of May 1942 to safety from invading Japanese. His wife and children had escaped shortly before toAmerica and home at Granville, Ohio, where they are now.

    Today the first chapters of a new book are beginning to unroll. Its setting is Upper Burma,50 miles from the Assam border where, as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Medical Corps., Dr. Seagrave set up a fieldhospital last January in mountainous jungle country where the trails climb four and five thousand feet in a few miles. With him are most of the doctors and nurses who were with him in the Battle of Burma. Their job is to keep Chinesecombat troops (re-equipped by U.S. forces in India after their flight from Burma) and advance U.S. engineers on theLedo Road, future link in re-establishment of ground communications with China, fit to fight. Almost as important,they must strive continuously to make friends with the Nagas, whose country has formally declared war on the U.S.

    Only a medical unit which had met and survived the difficulties of operating a hospital inthe jungle could have qualified for this assignment. Dr. Seagrave and his colleagues have managed well. The nurses,native girls trained to serve as surgeons, carpenters, scouts, linquists or chaffeurs, know also how to quiet apain-crazed patient on the operating table or probe with their small, delicate fingers for a bullet which aninstrument has failed to retrieve. They clamber up the Naga trails like goats and go for days on end with a few hours' sleep. And the whole outfit fights a continuing battle with malaria, scourge of all fighting units in that part of the world. Living quarters and hospital huts are bamboo bashas. Beds, tables and water jugs are bamboo, and bamboo shoots are a part of their daily diet.

    Medical supplies that are needed the most are dropped to them by parachute. Here again the talent of Dr. Seagrave's unit for improvisation is demonstrated. Because surgeries built of bamboo cannot be whitewashed,the walls are lined with silk from parachutes and hospital gowns are made of the same material. Often as not, in thatsteaming country, the doctors operate clad only in shorts. The ununiformed nurses wear the native longyis (wrap-around skirts), shorts or khaki slacks. Assisting Dr. Seagrave, whom the nurses call "Daddy," are two physicianssent him by General Stilwell during the Burma campaign: Major John Grindlay ("Uncle") and Major D. M. O'Hara, whomthe girls dubbed "Mr. Bear" when they caught sight of his hairy chest. Seagrave is so fearful that some medical unitfresh out of the States will get deeper into Burma than his that his commanding officer has issued a precautionaryorder: Any man who finds the doctor beyond a specific boundary is to bring him back - in irons if necessary.

Dr. Seagrave's headquarters is a cluster of bamboo huts high in the Naga Hills. Japs looted the 200-bedhospital on the Chinese border which he ran as a Baptist mission before he was commissioned in the Army. Medicalparties go on foot to natives when they are too sick to come in. Chinese patients from a nearby jungle camp wait outside the dispensary. Soon after Pearl Harbor Dr. Seagraveorganized a mobile medical unit for the Chinese 6th Army with Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps. General Stilwell made him a major in the U.S. Army in March 1942. Native nurses attend a Chinese patient in basha ward. Kyang Tswi (right) was ill with tuberculosisduring the Burma campaign, wept, when Dr. Seagrave sent her away for treatment. The girls are Kachins, Karens, Shansand Burmese, speak several languages in addition to English. Major John Grindlay of Youngstown, Ohio, a specialist in abdominal surgery, joined Dr. Seagrave's unit shortlyout of Mayo Clinic. In Mandalay, during the retreat to India, he operated 120 cases in 30 hours, with one hour's rest.Above, he gives American soldier spinal anesthetic. Maran Lu ministers to Chinese soldier who has a leg ulcer, common result of leech infection. Maran Lu hid in atree when the Japs first bombed Burma; during retreat she started into the jungle alone to "hide out until the end of the war." Irrepressible, she is a big morale builder. Hia Sein attends two Chinese, quartered in a single bed. She was first of nurses to lose home and family inBattle of Burma. Patient at left has beriberi, inflamation of the nerves. Ailments most common to this country aremalaria, goiter, amebic dysentery and venereal disease. Grindlay's assistants in operation on American soldier are Pearl and Koi (right), head nurse, whosename means "The Last One." Koi, who weighs 80 lb. (few of girls weigh over 100), was one of Seagrave's first andmost diligent students. She toted all her lecture notes out of Burma. Gawlu Kaw Nau makes temperature rounds, simplest routine performed by the nurses. They are graduate midwives,often perform deliveries unaided. They are gentle, adaptable, quick in emergencies. Of girls who trained withSeagrave, only one failed her government examination. Roi Tsai treats native chief, of head-hunting ancestors, for infection caused by leech. After-dinner music is provided by the nurses, who learned hymns from Seagrave in the days of the mission-hospital, popular songs from new doctors. On retreat from Burma they sang until they were out of breath, helped to cheer the bedraggled party. In a crude log chair sits an unhappy Chinese patient of Dental Technician Murray Ansis of Brooklyn. Before advent of dentists in unit, Dr. Seagrave filled one of his own wisdom teeth, later had to have it pulled. Major O'Hara does dental surgery. Little Bawk, a Kachin, entered nursing school at 17. Like other nurses, she takes her turn at cooking over logstove. Naga boy, "Snowball," works in kitchen. Nagas gave up head-hunting but still carry wedge-shaped knives and wickedcrossbows. In open-air mess hall Burmese food is served nurses and native men (left). American doctors get Americandiet. Fowl and eggs, vegetables from hospital garden and some U.S. canned goods make up their meals. Hut and furniturewere built by unit. Medical supplies dropped from air are unpacked by Maran Lu (left) and Na Shaw. From a point on theLedo Road where jeeps cannot pass, porters need five days to make the 50 miles to headquarters. Months of rain isolatehospital for days on end.

LIFE'S COVER:  Huge four-blade propeller is sign of the power built into the P-47 Thunderbolt that has chalked up new records for the U.S. Air Forces in high-altitude battles over Europe. Standing with his fighter at anairdrome in England is Captain James Clark, 22, of New York City, pilot who has shot down two Focke-Wulf 190's.





Life Visits an Army Hospital in Burma

Adapted by Carl W. Weidenburner
from the November 1, 1943 issue ofLIFE.
Portions copyright 1943 Time, Inc.



FOR PRIVATE NON-COMMERCIAL HISTORICAL REFERENCE ONLY


 TOP OF PAGE    PRINT THIS PAGE    ABOUT THIS PAGE 

 MORE CBI FROM LIFE MAGAZINE    CLOSE THIS WINDOW