REMEMBER SEPTEMBER - "My First Medical Experience" (The Original)

REMEMBER SEPTEMBER

The Second World War - WW2 - started on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's army entered Poland and bombs fell from the sky. On Sunday September 17, Stalin's troops marched in (in fullfilment of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 23, 1939 - the secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into German and Russian spheres of infuence). Hitler broke this Pact of Non-agression in June 1941 by invading Russia, turning ``good Uncle Joe" into an ally of the USA and Britain plunging the world into over half century of ``cold war" and total confusion as to the terms friend and foe. Did we realize that ``globalization" means one humanity under the sun?

My friend Danuta Podkomorska (with whom I spent 10 years at the Cecylia Plater-Zyberk School in Warsaw, graduating in June 1939, ready for the Academic year at Warsaw University in the Fall) - now retired doctor laryngologist in Winnipeg, described her not medical but certainly dehumanizing experiance at age 17 in Warsaw during September of 1939. She wrote her monumentally moving ``My First Medical Experience" in 1957, but Readers Digest refused to print it because: ``We do not publish horror stories." The pages remained dormant, recently re-discovered and their contents should be disseminated so we should all know more about war's ugly face and would be able to understand that war is a disaster not only for individuals, nations, states, but for the entire humanity. ``My First Medical Experience," displayed below, adopted into Polish by my friend of 20 years - Eva Boykin (Ziem) from Colorado has been published in the 281 issue of the Polish scouting magazine in UK ``Wezelek" to commemorate the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, 70 years ago.
Ewa Gierat, Bethlehem, CT 06751 ewabetlejem@sbcglobal.net 24 July 2009

My First Medical Experience by Dr. Danuta Podkomorska

Ever since I can remember. I wanted to become a doctor, with exception, however. When I was about six years old, our janitor's little boy, with whom I used to play, died and I was told that it was because the ambulance arrived too late. Then, for a short time, I wanted to be an ambulance driver who always arrived on time.
I cannot remember which event influenced my decision to choose the medical profession, but it became so entrenched in my mind, that I could think of nothing else. It was not that I wanted to save mankind, or even cure individuals out of pity, or to sacrifice myself for the poor and needy, noble ideals that often guide idealistic teenagers. This virtue is rather singularly absent from my character.
I read every available medical article at that time and found the mysteries and function of the human body most interesting whether healthy or ill, and determined to seek the answers to what, why and how.
The faculty of medicine was overcrowded and thus, being accepted was difficult unless the student was very bright, leaving an average individual to find a sponsor in order to gain entry. Only ten percent of the openings were designated for women. Upon graduation from high school, a friend of my uncle's who was a university professor promised to help provided I passed the written exam and if I met the requirements of the job. He asked me to report for a month's practice in the department of medicine, of which he was the head.
The department consisted of forty-five public beds, and was run by five of the previous year's medical students and four interns under the supervision of the above mentioned professor and his assistant.
I was seventeen years of age at that time and knew nothing about medicine except the Girl Guides' First-Aid Course and lay literature. My older colleagues promised themselves, of course, more than a few pranks and laughs at my expense, and were eager to undertake my training.
On my first day they said that I must learn to give injections, but before injecting a patient, I must practice on myself. I must confess that I am an awful coward, and particularly afraid of needles. Even during the war when getting my compulsory annual injections for typhoid fever (the only injections I ever had till then), I always carried ethyl chloride with me to freeze the skin over my arm. However, with all eleven people watching me, ready to laugh, what could I do but close my eyes then plunged the needle into my thigh up to the handle. I considered myself to be a hero and never dreamed of being able to do anything more heroic than that, and I am quite sure that to my audience it was just business as usual.
A day or two later, a patient died and our group prepared for the autopsy. They said that I must join them. I felt very flattered, curious and not the least bit afraid to participate in this procedure. I had always examined every piece of venison, poultry or fish brought to our kitchen, so was not troubled by a deceased human. My indifference in this matter undoubtedly caused concern among members of the group who began to whisper, the kind meant to reach every ear. ``Two of us should stand beside her so that she will act injure herself when she fells" and ``take ammonium chloride to aid her recovery and a basin in case she vomits". Then they formed a cortege led by two strong men holding me under each arm followed by two more carrying a stretcher in case I fainted which they pretended to hide. At this point, I really felt apprehensive though not of the autopsy, but of embarrassment and wished that they had not taken me with them! I tried in vain to invent a worthy cause or plausible excuse, which would summon me back to the ward, but could think of none.
We reached the building and I knew that there was no turning back. I entered the room looking attentively at the floor and immediately leaned against the wall for support, hoping to prevent myself from falling. At that same moment, I felt my feet slide forward thinking that I really was fainting after all, but I did not faint. Instead, I sat on the floor. I happened to push a wooden crate while trying to find support and when it moved, I lost my balance and fell. Everyone laughed including me most of all, and my stress vanished.
I looked around me. There were three tables and three autopsies being performed by interns. A professor moved to each table comparing the same organ, citing changes in each due to particular diseases, which I found very interesting. My peers decided that if my first visit to the autopsy room made no impression on me that I must be cold-hearted and would likely be unmoved as I pursued my medical studies. What they could not know was that what lay ahead held a much worse experience in store for me.
On September 1st, 1939, I got up as usual at the last moment, and still half asleep, hurried to catch my bus. I did not listen to the radio or read a newspaper or notice anything out of the ordinary on the streets either. One stop before the hospital we heard an alarm siren. The bus stopped and all passengers were ordered to run to the air-raid bunkers. We had a lot of air-raid drills so I thought it was just another one and not wanting to be late, I ran to the hospital instead. I paid no attention to the policeman who waved at me and it was only when I reached the hospital gate I learned that it was, in fact, war. I was neither afraid nor surprised. I felt only emptiness in my stomach and blankness in my mind.
Children all over the world play with toy weapons, and young people dream of heroic deeds and bravery but in Europe with its history of wars every twenty years or so, it is more profound. Three-quarters of Polish art, literature, paintings, songs etc. are connected to the fight for freedom. Ever since I was born, I heard stories about World War I from my father, his friends, my teachers, my friends' parents, servants and literally, everyone around me, from their own personal experiences. No wonder I looked upon war as an exciting adventure and felt that I would have missed the chance to be exposed to something very important if I had been denied the chance to experience it.
In the turbulent days just before the outbreak of World War II, my father kept repeating that war was a terrible tiling; the worst disaster that can happen to humanity and how he wished it could be avoided. I begged him to refrain from saying so as I would have been ashamed to have him repeat it in front of my friends and be thought of as a coward, which in fact he was not.
I had a rather privileged and sheltered childhood and as I recall, I felt my pulse quicken as German airplanes kept coming and circling while dropping bombs, each with a loud whistle as they approached their targets. A large bomb would strike the pound first, triggering two smaller bombs on each side that would explode a second later. The hospital, located in a triangle between a bridge over the Vistula River and two railway stations was vulnerable and the Red Cross painted on several of the hospital buildings offered no protection against German bombs as we quickly came to realize.
Soon the wounded were brought to the hospital, followed by those who were killed. As these numbers increased, every pair of hands with sufficient training was recruited to help. I tried my best to help, but at this stage, could not do much more than hold, elevate or carry.
Then, on September 6th, an order was broadcast by radio that all able-bodied men capable of carrying arms should leave Warsaw and proceed to the east where a large army was being formed. The professor remained as Emergency Director of the hospital along with a few of the older male doctors. The rest of the doctors were women and the auxiliary personnel too.
As I was of limited use in the hospital at the time, I was transferred to the morgue, which, including both the autopsy and waiting rooms, now consisted of three fairly large rooms half-filled with bodies lying side by side on the floor. My introduction to the reality of war came when I was put in charge of releasing these bodies to their families after the necessary two-page death certificates were completed in triplicate.
Both railway stations were run by Girl Guides and Boy Scouts, more so after the men had left, and that was where the majority of bombs were dropped. Half of the dead were from these stations. Among the dead were many of my Girl Guide friends, ages thirteen to sixteen, their lifeless eyes reflecting their terror, their bodies torn apart or burnt. One had her whole side burned deep, to her spine, and as the tissues shrank, she became twisted resembling a horseshoe so that her left ear touched her left foot. I had a lot of difficulty placing her body among the others because of it. Most had intestines constantly flowing from their abdomens.
As the days dragged on, bodies kept coming in increasing numbers. They were brought by trucks, which were quickly unloaded in readiness for the next supply. This was done by raising the hoists on the truck-boxes and opening the tailgates, spilling the bodies on the ground. During this hectic unloading, bodies were frequently torn in two, as their midsections were often almost nonexistent. The driver usually did not deliver the dead to the door. I was alone during this period, and sometimes a kind-hearted truck driver helped me to bring the bodies into the morgue.
All three rooms soon were filled. I then had to arrange the most recent bodies on top of the first layer of bodies, then atop the second layer. Some parts were brought in separately. I designated one corner for legs, another for arms, and another for heads.
When a mother found her child, I had to search for the part or parts that were missing and place the part or parts on top of the body to ensure that nothing was missed or leftover. At first, I tried very hard to match the particular body parts of each body, but as the queue of mothers lengthened, I had no time for such accuracy. If there was a part missing, I chose the first one available from the pile. Heads caused the most problems. Mothers, understandably, would not settle for anything but that of their loved one. However, in their search, they created an awful mess and I had no choice but to use a shovel to reorganize the remaining parts. When the body in question happened to be among the first layer, the whole pile was removed and I had to replace these in the original order, imbrued in blood and intestines that wound around my legs like serpents. The whole setting resembled a slaughterhouse. Even the ceiling had blood spattered on it, though I am at loss as to how it got there. Due to the enormous loss of blood, the bodies did not darken, as they would have normally. There was no power in the morgue and the stench and heat was unbearable, though in my state of mind, and suffering from fatigue, I am not sure I noticed how horrible it was.
I was drenched in blood and my dress became stiff in places where the blood had dried. My shoes were full of blood and excrement, and overflowed with bubbles with each step. The water supply was destroyed so if I wanted to eat, I had to clean my hands with grass. There was no place to sleep so I simply sat on the blood and feces-covered steps and tried to nap. This became the norm.
Alarm sirens, whistles of diving airplanes, machine-gun artillery barrage and exploding bombs along with crying and shouting produced an ongoing intolerable cacophony - dawn until dark. In addition to all this, I had to contend with and reassure despairing mothers with seemingly trivial and unimportant questions relating to the death certificates. I also had to endure the curses directed at me, the representative of the bureaucracy. Some mothers were silent, as if in a stupor, their robotic movements, unnatural and frightening. I preferred their shouting, fury and angry eyes. That at least was natural.
On my eighth day, telephone communication with the other side of the Vistula River was broken and my father came a week later to see if anything had happened to me. He probably did not find me in very good spirits and asked the professor to let me go home, so the professor did in spite of my protests.
I went to the river close by, threw my garments away, washed my sandals and dressed in my father's shirt. Minis were not in fashion yet, so I appeared somewhat of a curiosity as I walked the twelve kilometers home, a lengthier distance as the bridge I usually crossed had been damaged and was unsafe, and with bombs falling all around. Luckily there were not many people on the streets to see me in my provocative attire. Most hid in their cellars during the day, which was not safe at all during bombardments, then they did all their daily chores at night.
Although this first medical experience of mine lasted only eighteen days, the subsequent five years and eight months of the ``war adventure" of my immature dreams, held far more thrilling and dangerous incidents, but somehow, none seemed as impressive as those very first days of the war.
My father was right. War is the worst disaster that can happen to humanity. My experience is only one of many who endured that hell on earth. War has a sobering effect on all who experience it regardless of age. Perhaps, for self-preservation, one develops insensitivity or immunity to such trauma in order to preserve one's sanity, but these memories remain forever etched in my psyche.
P.S. I came to Canada in 1957 penniless. I learned that Reader's Digest had paid for short stories so I sent them mine that year. I got the note that they did not publish horror stories. Now I found a copy in Anna's papers. I did not know that she had kept it.