The Sunday Gentleman Page 9

  Thereafter, during my two-week visit, whenever elderly ladies heard me make inquiries in my hard Midwestern accent, they would become solicitous. I was always being instructed by elderly ladies. The young ones, mostly with nice legs, kept their distance as if I’d come to burn Atlanta again. Always, my elderly guides, after instructions and digressions, sent me off with the local cliche, “This is just some of our Southern hospitality.” When I wrote my wife, in California, about all this hospitality, she replied somewhat acidly, “Wait’ll they find out you’re a Jew.”

  At my transfer point, I took a trackless trolley. After an hour, the occupants were weeded down to a handful of mothers and wives journeying to Lawson to visit between the hours of two and four. At the end of the line, the mothers, wives, and I descended from the bus for our last transfer. We had our choice of waiting for a military bus that ran on an erratic schedule or taking one of the scavenger cabs that lurked nearby. The cabs charged a dime a person. It began raining again, and I stood inside a shed with the women. The women huddled together, and I stood off alone. I caught two of the women looking at my legs. It made me uncomfortable, and I finally took a cab.

  Lawson General Hospital, physically, was a disappointment. I’d imagined a vast, imposing, solid stone structure, like all those city hospitals. Instead, it was a network of low-slung, insubstantial, wooden buildings sprawled along the paved highway. It seemed like a jungle of barracks, without beginning, without end. Later, when I inquired, I learned from an efficient middle-aged secretary, a professional Southerner, that Lawson consisted of precisely 245 one-story buildings stretching across a frontage that covered seven-eighths of a mile.

  I learned further, from a Vermont WAC sergeant who was worrying about the weight she had gained in service, that Lawson was one of seven army hospitals handling amputees in the United States. There had been five before the war, and two were added afterward. These amputee centers, their facilities temporarily inflated, were spotted throughout the land—New York, Michigan, Utah. These hospitals had handled, or were handling, the 15,000 amputees produced by World War II. About 10,000 were servicemen who had lost a leg—or legs—mostly from wounds caused by shrapnel from enemy artillery, or by land mines.

  Lawson had a bed capacity of 3,300, and during the period I was there, some 2,700 patients were registered. Most of these patients were soldiers with overseas ribbons; some few were dependents of soldiers, an additional responsibility of the army. The number of amputees was relatively small, yet their presence dominated the life of the hospital.

  My initial duty at Lawson was to report to the colonel in the Orthopedic Surgery Building. His office was the first to the right, just beyond the pharmacy. The colonel was a short, slender, wiry Missourian. He was late-thirtyish. His hair gave the effect of having a crew cut, though it didn’t, and his eyes were watery and distant. His profile was that of a somewhat pleasant, though emaciated Neanderthal man. His dress was eccentric only on top and on the bottom—he wore a Stillwell hat and cumbersome government-issue shoes. He had done six years of institutional and postgraduate medical work in St. Louis before the war, and had enlisted in the Army Reserve to get his year of military service over with. He had specialized in orthopedic surgery only after entering the army.

  The colonel had been at Lawson four and a half years, and was a little dazed. When I first met him, which was in New York at Signal Corps motion picture headquarters, I had thought that his bewilderment resulted from being suddenly exposed to ex-Hollywood characters and their erratic manner and mystifying talk. In New York, he moved about like a Boston banker surrounded by M-G-M, and awkwardly tried to add movie terms to his own speech, which only added up to new Goldwynisms. But here at Lawson, in his own element, among his colleagues, even though he displayed brief flashes of assurance and authority, the bewilderment was still with him. I decided it was chronic.

  When I first arrived, the colonel thought that he might be out of the service in four more weeks and he was quietly elated. He would take his wife and three children back to St. Louis and go into orthopedic surgery. “We had fifteen thousand amps in four years of war,” he would say, “but every year, in America, there are forty thousand amp cases. For the first time, I’ll be able to work with different groups, even with children, and be able to study and really take my time.” Sometimes he was worried about going into private practice. “I’m a debunker now,” he would say. “I tell the truth. I don’t know all that fancy customer psychology. I’ll probably never have a decent practice. I’ll wind up selling newspapers.” Then he would remember that, as an officer, he had saved enough money to buy a modest house. This cheered him. He candidly admitted that he had come into the army with a brand-new wife, one room of furniture, and five dollars.

  But by the time my visit ended, his private practice was no longer a prospect. The Surgeon General’s office had frozen him to his army job, frozen him overnight. He was key personnel. They had released too many medical men too fast and now they needed all remaining key personnel. After four and a half years, the colonel took it with a smile, and I liked him immensely for that, but I was sorry as hell for him, even though it is not GI for a sergeant ever to be sorry for a colonel.

  After he was frozen, the colonel appeared more preoccupied than ever. Although he was a project officer, and overseer of our film, he would forget me for hours at a time if some surgical oddity reared its head. Or an unusual X-ray.

  The colonel collected X-rays as other men collect artistic nude photographs or rare stamps. Any X-ray, the most pedestrian, would arrest him, and bring forth much muttering and head-wagging. Once when we were in the middle of a conference, a medical officer put his head in to say that Staff Sergeant So-and-So was being separated from the hospital. This provoked a great show of alarm from the colonel, who promptly ordered that the staff sergeant appear at once with his complete file. When the sergeant materialized, somewhat frightened, the colonel demanded only his X-rays. “I remember you. Sergeant,” the colonel said, holding an X-ray to the light. “You had a hip fractured and refractured and…” He drifted off into silent ecstasy over the victim’s colorful breakages. Finally, after an hour of persistent tongue-clucking, the colonel selected three choice and gloomy X-rays, put them aside for his album, and sent the sergeant packing into civilian life.

  On another occasion, hearing that an ex-saddler from Kentucky, who had lost both legs above the knees in the service, was being discharged, the colonel broke an important appointment just to have one last glimpse of the fellow. Later, the colonel told me that he had taken the Kentuckian into the countryside and photographed him in 16-mm color. “That boy got around pretty well for a bilateral amp,” explained the colonel. “Only trouble, when I tried to get him to ride a horse again, he couldn’t mount without help. He’ll have a rugged time.” The colonel brightened. “But I took some magnificent pictures.”

  The colonel’s cinematic ambition, beyond our immediate project, was to make a movie about multiple amputees he had met during the war. He showed me the outline he had written. His documentary film would include the two quadruple amputees in the United States—one who had lost all four limbs when he stepped on a land mine in the Pacific theater, and who was still at Percy Jones General Hospital, and another who had suffered a winter airplane crash in Maine and lost all his limbs from freezing, and who was now a civilian. The colonel also wished to include the six triple amputees of World War H. “We have one of them right here at Lawson,” he said enthusiastically. This triple amputee had been a Georgia University football end, All-American, and during the Battle of the Bulge, he almost froze to death. Three of his limbs were removed; his torso survived.

  The colonel said that he wanted to make this picture a medical serial. Five years from now, he wanted the Army to send cameramen out to visit all these same amputees and film them again after their rehabilitation. The colonel asked me if I thought that this would make a good picture. I said yes.

  The colonel’s narrow o
ffice was also my own office during my stay, and it became for me a room out of a nightmare. It was furnished with an ordinary wooden desk, chairs, a white-sheeted examination table—and something horrible on top of the bookcase. This something was a formidable, square, glass container, filled with yellow liquid in which floated an object that resembled a dehydrated tree stump with roots streaming from it. The very first day there, I glanced at the typed label pasted on the glass. From the obscure medical language, it appeared to be the case history of a corporal from Alabama, aged twenty-eight, white, who had died in 1943. The realization hit me that this object, floating, was a part of the corporal, on display much as a writer’s first rejection slip would be. It seemed impossible because the Thing resembled nothing. The pasted typed label was insistent. I finally decided it was a human bone of some kind. I was immediately nauseated.

  In the days after, I was irresistibly drawn to the Thing, and I read the case history a half-dozen times, and each time was nauseated. At last, I moved my project across the corridor, and took to using a WAC’s typewriter.

  My greatest problem of survival in the hospital was learning the native tongue. While most of the patients persisted in using the language of the barracks, and were therefore intelligible to me, the medical officers and limb mechanics, with whom I had more contact, conversed in an English more befuddling than Chaucer in the original. The two principal terms used were “amps” and “prostheses.” Any patient who had a limb amputated was, quite naturally, an “amp.” And the artificial limbs, ranging from arm to hand to thigh and foot (and, I was told later, false teeth might technically be included in this category), were called “prostheses” in the plural and “prosthesis” in the singular.

  The vocabulary was rich and endless. Arms were referred to as “upper extremities” and legs as “lower extremities.” A temporarily fitted artificial leg was a “provisional prosthesis.” All amps were broken down into specialized categories—a BK was a soldier whose leg had been removed below the knee, and BE was one whose arm had been removed below the elbow. The most difficult for me to use, at first, was AK, because of its previous connotation in my vocabulary. Now it meant an above-the-knee amputee. There were others ranging from a “syme,” one who had lost his foot but not his heel, to “hip disarticulation,” one who was minus a leg from the hip down, a particularly limiting loss. The most revolting expression, and one bandied about constantly by the doctors, was “guillotined.” When a soldier was first wounded on the field of battle, and required immediate surgery, his limb was guillotined—meaning it was sawed off straight and unceremoniously, to be operated upon again later, to shape it so that an artificial limb could be fitted.

  The worst thing about the language, for a squeamish and sentimental layman like myself, was the casual manner in which it was used. The surgeons at Lawson discussed these things with less overt concern than they showed when they ordered steaks medium-well. I realized, of course, that another operation, another man without a leg, was to them as much a part of their daily life as their morning shave, and it had to be that way, but to the uninitiated it was dismaying.

  Once in the evening, when most of the staff had gone home or back to the barracks, I accompanied the colonel on his last rounds. We were walking through the Orthopedic Limb Shop, and before turning off the lights in each room, he would describe some curio. In the last room, where all types of odd contraptions lay, I saw an utterly medieval monstrosity, a skeleton of leather and steel, the largest network of braces I’d ever seen. I asked the colonel about it, and he went over, and had to grunt as he lifted it. “This is the worst one,” he said. “It’s a prosthesis for a man who’s been paralyzed from the waist down. It helps him stand. It’s really not very good, but what can we do?” He set it down, switched off the lights, and as we walked out he said, “I think those paralytics would be better off if they allowed us to cut off both their legs. It might help them ambulate.” I said nothing. Another time, the colonel took me to see a hip disarticulation case. A big, blond, obliging boy, who neither smiled nor scowled, placed himself on exhibit for us with the disinterest of a sideshow freak. The boy wore a T-shirt and jock shorts and he had lost his right leg and thigh to the hip. He wore a cumbersome prosthesis, with a tremendous light brown leather socket for his hip stump, and a yellow fiber leg. The colonel asked him to walk on level floor for us, and then to negotiate a slight incline. The boy did so rapidly, professionally, but the prosthesis made him jolt when he walked. When we were through, the colonel thanked him and we left. “He has an interesting gait,” said the colonel. “We’ll use him for the end of our movie.” Suddenly, halfway down the corridor, the colonel halted. “Sa-ay, I forgot to have him do the best thing. It’ll photograph fine, show the limitations of hip disarticulation prostheses.” I inquired what had been forgotten. The colonel stood there shaking his head. “I wanted to make him run for you. When he runs, he falls flat on his face!”

  But the incident that affected me most was the least important. I met a lieutenant at the hospital who lived with his wife in my hotel. We became friends right off because he came from a small town near Madison, Wisconsin, and had gone to the University, and had known a football player I had attended high school with in Kenosha. He suggested that I drive back to town with him, and save myself the tedious bus and trolley ride, and I grabbed at the chance.

  The first time I left with him, he was also taking his civilian secretary, a middle-aged, graying woman. As we walked to the parking lot, the lieutenant broke off his chatter to me, and turned to his secretary. “By the way. Miss Smith, I forgot to look. Do I have any surgery in the morning?” Miss Smith shook her head. “None. You’re not posted.” He turned back to me and kept right on talking, and as I half listened, I thought: God, in one of those shacks someone is waiting for surgery, a portion of a leg to be taken off and carted away (what do they do with the legs?); someone is waiting and his ma and pa are somewhere, away, sitting and waiting and worrying, and his girl or wife, and a couple of friends waiting, and himself before falling asleep tonight, thinking about it, his whole life standing still on this one surgery, and here I am walking with a young doctor who is asking if there is any surgery for him in the morning, he forgot to look.

  When we got into the coupe, I stared at the lieutenant, a nice young guy with a handsome, beefy, red face, probably exhausted from overwork and wanting out every minute, and with his wife waiting back in the hotel and bright people coming over for dinner, a nice guy—but in one of those beds, another guy waiting for when surgery is posted. I felt lousy all the way back to the hotel.

  Our picture project, which occupied most of my waking hours and a good portion of my insomnia, was divided into two parts. The first part concerned the lower extremity, and the second part the upper extremity. The first part was the more vital, since men with leg losses were twice as numerous as men with arm losses. Also, fitting the leg prosthesis was more complicated.

  The earlier promise, that I would not have to witness surgery, was kept. Our picture, both parts, dealt solely with the manufacture and the use of prostheses—but always, fearfully, the surgery and the agony were just offstage.

  I spent most of my time in the Orthopedic Limb Shop. This consisted, first, of a vast reception room presided over by a cheerful Irish WAC who limped. Next to it, separated by a white curtain, was the tiny measuring room, and this opened into three rooms where the construction of the artificial limbs took place.

  The process was efficient and undramatic. A patient who returned from overseas with his leg missing below the knee was treated and further operated upon at Lawson. In the old days, he would have waited a year or more for a limb fitting. Now, about ten weeks after final surgery, he was wheeled into the shop. Sometimes he swung in on crutches. If the shrinkage of his stump had been uniform, and the nerves had lost their irritability, and the wound was soundly healed, he was ready. He was escorted into the tiny measuring room, and his stump placed on plain brown paper and carefully t
raced. Too, his good leg was traced and measured. Then he was brought into the plaster room and told to sit on a bench. His naked stump was exposed. A woolen stockinette was slipped tightly over it, plaster smeared around the stockinette, and when the cast had hardened, it was removed. The patient was also removed. From here on in, the process was out of his control.

  In the shop, I met the enlisted men and civilians who manufactured the prostheses. They were a strange assortment. The boss of the plaster room, a sturdy ex-sergeant who introduced himself as Mister Chandler, looked like an impressive welterweight who might excel at infighting. He, for one, had been a commercial limb maker before the war. His aides were all converts. One had been a radio repairman. Another had been a garage mechanic. A bemustached corporal from Long Island had been a subway dispatcher.

  In brief days, the prosthesis grew. Out of the original plaster cast came a plaster facsimile of the patient’s stump. Around this plaster stump, layers of wet hide were glued. This, eventually, would be attached to the artificial leg. Elsewhere, in the shop, other items were being assembled A willow wood foot, shaped to fit the patient’s shoe size, and built so that it would bend on a rubber hinge at the ball. The willow foot was then attached to the bottom of a fiber artificial leg, usually prefabricated, and the socket to the top of that leg. A leather lacer, to hold the prosthesis to the patient’s stump, and a special pelvic belt, to hold the whole mechanism to his body, were added.

  The final product was always carefully aligned and fitted on the patient. The slightest irritation would send the prosthesis back through the assembly line.

  When I saw my first prosthesis up close (it was a complex one built for an AK, above-knee amp), I asked, perhaps naively, if the men, well, went to bed wearing these limbs. The limb mechanic appeared startled, then said no, they took them off first, then understood why I inquired and added that they really weren’t much trouble to take off and put on because you simply unbuckled the pelvic belt and slid out and into bed.