On Iwo Jima

From bloody Iwo Jima, TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod, veteran of the Aleutians and Tarawa, last week radioed this account of a night in a front-line Marine hospital:

The 4th Marine Division hospital was built low into the bulldozed hillside to afford maximum protection from Jap mortar and artillery fire. It consisted of two long dark green tents plus two operating rooms about 10 by 20 ft. which the Japs had built as concrete rainwater cisterns. The air inside was stuffy with stale cigaret smoke mingled with the smells of dirt and blood and sweat. But the rawboned Division surgeon, Commander Richard Silvis, was very proud of his operating rooms.

Shortly after 8 o'clock on the evening of Dog Day-plus-15, Dr. Silvis and I crawled through the blacked-out entrance into one of these cistern operating rooms. Beneath the big non-shadow electric lamps lay a Marine captain who had been a Jap machine gunner's target about three hours earlier. Dr. John A. Harper held up the wounded man's slashed, liver-colored spleen: "We also took out a piece of kidney," he said, "and he has a bullet through his diaphragm and lung. He asked for a priest right away." Silvis pulled back the wounded man's eyelid and said: "He looks pretty good, though."

Some Would Die. We crossed to one of the long tents--the receiving ward where patients are brought first. At one end were eight operating tables where the wounded were examined immediately. The simpler operations were performed right there. The complex cases went to the cistern operating rooms.

The private on the first table had been wounded only slightly. Dr. Howard Johnson of Uniontown, Pa. was rubbing sulfanilamide powder into a hole about the size of a quarter in the boy's left arm. The marine on another table had his face covered. The doctor examining him said to Dr. Silvis: "I think we had better send him to the Corps Medical Battalion. They are better fixed to diagnose eye cases. It looks like this fellow will lose one or maybe both his eyes."

A very pale and dirty marine lay on another table. A corpsman was adjusting the rubber tube carrying the whole blood to his arm. Dr. Silvis said: ""See his lips. He's washed up." Then he turned to the corpsman and said: "Let's give him another bottle and put it in the femoral [big vein in each groin]--the blood can run in faster than it can through the arm."

More than half the receiving tent, like the whole of the other big tent, was designated as a "recovery ward." After men had been operated on, they stayed there pending evacuation by hospital ship or by airplane.

Some had light wounds like broken arms or legs, and they would be evacuated soon. Others, despite the best efforts of many skilled men, would die and lie forever in the alien volcanic ash of Iwo. A medical corpsman who had severe multiple abdominal wounds died as we stood beside his cot. One minute his heavy rasping breath could be heard throughout the tent. The next he was quiet and the sheet was pulled over his head. I saw a big marine who might have been a wrestler, judging by his huge neck and bulging biceps. His barrel chest heaved mightily as he fought to breathe and live. Said Pharmacist's Mate Billy O'Neal: "One of his main arteries was hit. The internal hemorrhage is so great, he seems to be drowning in his own fluids." Half an hour later the big fellow was dead.

It was now after 9 o'clock and 183 patients had come in that day.

"I Think I'm Going to Save Him." I went back through the dark to the No. 1 cistern. On Dr. Silvis' operating table was the same dirty-faced private who had been fed blood through the femoral veins.

He was smoking a cigaret now. Dr. Silvis said: "I put lipstick on him" -- meaning that color had returned. He added an aside: "I think I'm going to save that guy." They had cut the private's clothes off. There was a cluster of guts as big as two fists sticking out of the left side of his abdomen, though the hole in the belly was thumb-sized.

Said a doctor standing by: "Look at that. First they take out the spleen, then they resect [cut and mend] the small bowel, next they sew up the rent in the colon. In civilian life any one of those would be regarded as a major operation." Before the two doctors finished, they had removed a total of nearly two feet of gut, which they tossed into a wastebasket.

While waiting for Dr. Silvis to finish, I walked back to the recovery tent. One man wore a plaster cast which covered him from toes to chest. His right arm had been amputated about six inches below the shoulder. He was the only amputation case in the ward, but one of the doctors said that there had been a lot in the past few days -- several where two limbs had been lost, two cases where three limbs had been cut off. One of the latter had died after being evacuated.

It was now 20 minutes after midnight, and the receiving ward was quieting down.

"I'm All Right Now." One new case came in, a man who had stepped on a land mine. Although he had been given a full grain of morphine, he was in extreme agony, and he pleaded with the doctors: "Please, can't you put me to sleep. My God, my feet feel numb." It was no wonder. One of his feet had been blown off just above the ankle, leaving a piece of charred bone protruding from beneath a hastily applied bandage. In addition, his other leg was mangled, probably beyond saving, and his arms and hands had been badly torn and burned black. In a few-minutes he stopped groaning, and when the doctor sought to turn his arm gently, the wounded man said: "Go ahead and turn her over, Doc. I'm all right now." Dr. Silvis was just finishing when I returned. He thought his dirty-faced private had a pretty fair chance. Dr. Silvis took off his white gown, and put his khaki shirt on, and when we started through the blackout flaps, I noticed that the concrete floor was lightly covered with blood.

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