AS they gathered material for this -"-week's cover story, The Plight of the U.S. Patient, TIME correspondents across the nation found that in many cases their own experiences with medicine and medical men belonged in their files. From Portland, Ore., where he came down with symptoms suggesting Hong Kong flu, Reporter David Rorvik wired a wry account of the difficulties of locating a hotel doctor. He dialed room service by mistake, and his vociferous complaints were interpreted as a slur on the hotel's cuisine. Washington Correspondent David Lee made the mistake of lighting a cigarette while he posed a question about preventive medicine. "Don't ask me about preventive medicine when people like you, who obviously know better, smoke two packs of cigarettes a day," snapped Dr. Philip Lee, Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. End of that part of the interview.

The story was edited by Champ Clark and written by Gilbert Cant, who was able to add many an observation and experience of his own out of 19 years' service as writer of TIME'S Medicine section.

Contributing Editor Robin Man-nock is no stranger to the more rigorous aspects of journalism. He covered the Congo fighting in 1964 and rode into Stanleyville with a truckload of mercenaries. His seat that night was a case of dynamite. More recently, Mannock did a stretch of war reporting in Viet Nam. But neither there nor in Africa, he says, was he ever in quite as much danger as he was in last week, while visiting Alaska. With the aid of TIME'S Anchorage Stringer, Joe Rychetnik, Mannock wangled his way into some winter war games. "It was so cold out there in the snow," says Mannock, "all you could think about was staying alive."

Mannock spent part of the evening reminiscing with an old acquaintance from Viet Nam, Brigadier General John C. Bennett. Merely talking about the steamy mud and mold df the jungle war, while the temperature outside plunged to a near-record --53DEG F., helped the two men keep warm. It was outside, says Mannock, that trouble took over. "My biggest problem was that my beard kept freezing." For the rest of the story, see THE NATION, "The Coldest War."

The Cover: Pen and ink with watercolor by Ronald Searle.

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