Guerrilla Surgeon

Dr. Lindsay Rogers

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781786256546
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Dr. Rogers was a New Zealander who, after duty with British troops in North Africa during the early years of the war, made the decision to enter guerrilla warfare in the Balkans and was accepted for training to join the Jugoslav partisans. The account of his experiences, written a decade ago after he had just left the country, has the freshness of recently known people and events and the detachment of a thoughtful mind which could pause to analyse and indicate their meaning for the course of victory and for future Balkan politics. On one level the narrative is full of the scenes of daily life. There are conversations with his aids Bill and Ian (important people in the book), the work in makeshift hospitals, the dangers of movement and escapes and the developing friendships with many of the partisani. But these last, for example, are also geared to show their tendency towards Russian sympathies and the unfortunate handling of British propaganda which made the partisansi think that Britain's main contribution to the war was in helping Mikhailovich. We see too Dr. Rogers' concern with medical methods. He was appalled at the rough and unsympathetic operation room techniques he found among German trained doctors; he saw the possibility for a system of evacuating the wounded to Italy. Eventually he became so valuable that Tito commandeered him from the base in Croatia, where Rogers was beginning to feel at home, to start a medical school in Bosnia. A personal history which is exciting and perceptive enough to hold its own in the war annals market.—Kirkus Book Review

PART I—VIS

CHAPTER 1—Arrival by Night

We arrived by night. It was one of those autumn nights, cold and crisp, with the clouds scudding across a half-lit moon.

A few hurried goodbyes to the British naval lieutenant who had delivered us so far, and then we tumbled into a small canvas boat which nosed its way toward the island of Vis, shrouded in the mist of the Dalmatian coast. The fisherman who met us couldn’t understand our Serbo-Croat at all, and attempts at conversation soon lapsed. We landed in a small bay between rocky headlands, and with many “Maria Madonnas” he helped us to carry our few stores ashore. So we stood at last on free Yugoslav territory.

Late that night we reached the town of Vis, in Partisan hands, and we saw for the first time the Dalmatian Partisans, among whom we were destined to work for many months.

We saw the Red Stars on their Partisan hats, their cosmopolitan uniforms, some German, a few British, but mostly ragged Italian. We saw, scrawled across the gray walls of stone buildings, “Zivio Marshal Tito,” “Zivio Marshal Stalin,” and then we realized that we were working now for a different army, with a different philosophy and an outlook different from our own. The great scarlet Hammer and Sickle slashed across the town hall brought us for the first time near to our Russian ally, and the Red Flags that broke into life from dead flagpoles with every gust of wind waved a new idea and a new ideal across our essentially British outlook.

A British officer came toward us. Even in the gloom of the night you could tell that he was British. His walk and his high gum boots, his beret and his riding trousers, and his face half lit by a smile of welcome placed him miles apart from the guerrillas. He took us to a house, and told us to get some sleep, for in the morning he would take us to the chief doctor of the island, and thereafter we must make our own way.

I tumbled into my sleeping bag on the floor, Bill’s gentle snoring keeping the room alive; the warmth of the last rum played around my inside, and with it a feeling that at last, freed from the routine of orthodox army life, we could start on our own work, do as we pleased, without odd colonels and brigadiers poking around, without forms galore to fill in, without everlasting orders from some Old Man. These thoughts gave such satisfaction that plans for the future tumbled across my consciousness in profusion, elbowing each other, jostling and squeezing for a place in the scheme of things, until, overwhelmed, I went to sleep.

Morning; and Ian woke me with a cup of tea. Then I looked at the dirty floor where we had slept, Bill still snoring beatifically, the window full of dust, and outside the tramp of marching feet down the cobbled Street.

After breakfast, consisting of the bully beef and tea we had brought with us, we emerged into the narrow Street already full of Partisan soldiers hurrying toward the stone wharf, where, during the night, stores had been landed. A rough-looking crowd of Balkan brigands, they looked—rough, and tough, too, for each carried a Sten gun, and at least two grenades swung from his belt. Few were in good physical condition, some were shaved, and a few actually had gold braid on their arms. A Partisan girl—”Partizanka”—passed us, walking up the lane with a Partisan boy. They were singing, and singing cheerily, too; we stopped to listen, but they turned the corner, leaving behind them the rhythm of a melody we were never allowed to forget.

We turned down toward the wharf—just a stone wall at the end of the small harbor. Lying alongside were three fishing boats unloading what looked like British mines and boxes of Sten guns. We wondered where they had come from in the night. Then someone came up to us and spoke. “Zdravo, drugovi?”—”How are you, comrades?” But we, who had learned Serbian from a Chetnik, did not understand Dalmatian, so we just stood and gaped.

It was all so new and different, quite unlike the war we had known. We watched a guerrilla saluting an officer with clenched fist; he raised his hand and said, “Zdravo,” and passed on. A fine rain wreathed the hills behind in obscurity. We stepped into a doorway to shelter and then noted Pears, the British officer who had met us the night before, as he came toward us.

He took us to meet the chief medical officer of the 8th Corpus, Dr. Zone. He appeared to have no rank and nothing to distinguish him from the crowds of Partisans who passed in a never-ending stream along the cobbled road, each with a case of arms on his shoulder. Zone, an elderly Pole, wore an old Italian uniform, and over his back swung a small haversack with a red cross painted flamboyantly on it. He carried it as an infant carries his first schoolbag, preciously and grandly, a treasure, a badge of learning, and over his other shoulder swung another small bag in which he kept his papers.

Through his thick glasses he peered at us, and welcomed us to the Partisan forces saying, “No matter how hard you work there will always be more to do.” He suggested we should come with him to a temporary hospital already established on the island, and there start work immediately.

A sentry stood at the door. Passing him, Zone invited us into a side room, a kind of mess, conference room, commissar’s political room, and staff room rolled into one. He took from the sideboard a jug full of dark prošek wine and poured us each a glass. I gave him a cigarette and then we sat, sipped, and talked.

We told him that we would fit in with whatever he suggested and that our organization would endeavor to supply the island with all its medical stores. When things were better, we would arrange the evacuation of the wounded to Italy, where a Partisan hospital was already being established.

As we talked, another man came in, Dr. A. He was actually in charge of the patients. Zone asked us to go with him and he would show us the wounded and the hospital equipment. We followed him upstairs. There they were; thin and pale, in beds, true, but crowded together, the seeping smell of pus pervading the whole atmosphere. It was all so different from what we were used to; we just looked, and watched, and learnt.

Dr. A. then suggested that we operate on a fractured femur, already some four weeks old and heavily infected. So we went to the operating theater, the boys started unpacking our two cases of equipment, and soon everything was ready.

They carried in the patient and with him came a horde of onlookers—nurses, commissars, soldiers, and porters. It seemed as though anyone passing along the Street had come in to see the British doctor.

Bill mixed the pentothal anesthetic and handed the syringe to Dr. A. to give. Then, for the next twenty minutes, I watched the worst intravenous injection I have ever seen given. He jabbed the needle this way and that, he bent the boy’s arm over a bare piece of wood, and every time the boy moaned, he looked at him as though it was his fault. Every moment I wanted to take the syringe from him, but I managed to keep cool. Then at last he got into the vein.

I finished the job, put the leg into a Tobruk plaster on a Thomas splint, and gave instructions for him to have sulphonamide every four hours. We started the next case. Again the same procedure; not only did he fail completely to get the needle into the vein, but he seemed to disregard any pain he caused. The wounded were heaved onto the table like bags of chaff, bandages were ripped off regardless of pain, two patients out of four stopped breathing and nearly died, and every anesthetic had to be completed by the administration of chloroform.

It struck me as an impossible situation. When dinner came at 6 P.M., I felt that I had done my usual thirty cases instead of four. Slowly I walked down the stairway from the operating theater into the side room. Bill was with me, Ian having stayed behind to clean up. On the side-board was a full flagon of dark red wine; silently Bill took it and poured out two good glasses, one of which he slowly put down in front of me and said, “By Christ, that was bloody awful. Have they got no heart?”

An old man came into the room just at this juncture, a tall figure, in civilian dress, but wearing a Partisan cap. He proffered his hand, smiled, and said, “Say, guy, my name is Joe. I was in America twelve years ago, and can speak American.”

“Say, Joe, I’m damned glad to meet you,” I said. “Is there anyone else here who can understand English?”

“Yes, there’s Zena, old Zone’s wife. She will be here in a minute.” Within a minute or two a small fragile woman, with hawk-like Jewish nose, long, cigarette-stained fingers, black, scraggy hair, and a vitality which poured from her, came into the room. Every movement was quick and vital, every word accompanied by a flashing change of expression. She put out her hand and in perfect English said, “Major Rogers, is it?”

I produced a cigarette, we sat down again, and Zena refilled the glasses. Then we talked and talked, and I told her what an enormous amount of work needed doing in the hospital. I suggested that it would probably be better if Dr. Zone would give us a building for ourselves. We were a team, and Ian and Bill were both trained medical orderlies and anesthetists. (I thought to myself that no one could possibly be worse than Dr. A.) Perhaps they could give us two nurses, a few helpers, and someone who could translate until we learnt Dalmatian.

Her only reply was: “Wait awhile.”

The meal was brought in, and as we were eating the door opened and another woman entered. What a striking character and face. We rose, and she came over and said in French, “I am Jela, the apothecary.”

She sat down awkwardly and I saw at once that she was suffering from some disability. She rose and put down her Beretta repeating rifle in the corner and flung her little schoolbag on the settee. But she left her four grenades on her belt.

I hastened to pour out another glass of wine and offer her some food, but she refused all, and sat down looking at us, just taking us in.

What a fine commissar Jela was, and how much we were indebted to her later on. She was a Bosnian from Sarajevo and had been active in the “Struggle” since 1941. At first she had been a fighter, but the complete lack of vitamins, the poorness of scarce food, and the frozen winters had produced a peripheral neuritis, and now she could hardly hobble along. Her silvery hair, curly and crisp, fell down from under her cap, and around the lined corners of her eyes and at her mouth always played a smile. Her white, anemic hands with long, pinkish nails rested on the table, and we noted that Jela let Zena do all the talking while she did the observing.

The conversation was in French and English and when Jela wanted to say something privately she and Zena would speak rapidly in Bosnian dialect.

Then quick as lightning she threw this one at me. “Majore, what do you think of our Partisans?” That was a fast one so early in the game, but I replied, “Dr. Zone has treated us with utmost kindness and courtesy and if all are like him, then we will get on famously together.”

“And, Majore,” went on Jela, “what do you think of Dr. A. as a doctor?”

It couldn’t be put off much longer, I supposed, so I replied, “Our techniques differ a lot, Jela, probably due to the fact that he learnt his surgery in the German school, and I in the British.”

There was silence for a few moments after this and Ian came down from the operating theater and started his dinner. Still silence. Coffee was brought in, and with it came another woman.

This was Borga, the commissar for Vis hospitals. Zena introduced us and after she had put her gun in the corner, she sat down and began devouring her meal.

Borga resembled a cross between the frigid missionary type and an earnest schoolteacher. Her hair, jet black, was tied in a bundle behind her head, her cap fitted all skewwhiff, and she laughed heartily as some childless women do. A few odd black hairs stood out from a pigmented mole on her face, showing up a rather beautiful clear skin. She was one of these “friends at first sight” people.

The more the boys saw her the more they hated her, and the more I admired her. She asked, “Are your sleeping quarters satisfactory?”

“Not very,” I said. “They are cramped and dirty, and perhaps better could be found for us.” Out from her schoolbag came a notebook and down went our requirements, a typical commissar action. However, next day we had them.

After three days of surgical hell with Dr. A., Zena came to us and said, “I have been appointed to work with you always and shall come and live with you and look after you. You are strangers here, you know, and do not understand Partisan ways.”

So that evening the four of us walked back from the hospital, Zena pointing out the Dalmatian Alps across the sea, and the great Checknovitch Villa standing at the entrance to the harbor, and showing us houses where prominent fascists had lived.

A patrol of Partisan boys and girls passed us singing as they walked along the cobbled Street. I asked, “Where are they going?”

“Oh, back to Bosnia, where the Germans are making a very fierce offensive,” said Zena. “Yes, they leave Vis in small boats, in the middle of the night, and steal in the darkness across to the mainland where they are met by other Partisan bands and then start fighting again. It’s awful in Bosnia now,” she added. “No food, no clothes, no guns, no bandages, no doctors, and everywhere isolation and death.”

We looked out to sea across the U-shaped harbor. The stars were shining and the water gently lapping against the stone wall, so gently, like the washing of a baby, so peacefully, that our pace slowed to its rhythm until finally, just before our house, we stopped and looked across the water to where the Checknovitch Villa stood.

“Ah,” said Zena, “I asked Zone today if we could have the Checknovitch Villa for our own hospital, but he said, ‘No . . . it is too exposed to E-boat attacks and air raids.’ But,” she added almost wistfully, “it is such a peaceful place and the summer sun shines across the bay and flames the harbor like a sweeping spirit, lapping the edge and turning the hills beyond into gold. . . . I did so want the Checknovitch Villa for us.”

“Then you have asked Zone for a hospital of our own?” I queried.

“I was glad to,” she answered, “for I know what that place and Dr. A. are. I have worked in a cow byre, in a pigsty, but that was in the mountains of Bosnia. Here things are different and we could make them so much better, couldn’t we?”

We opened the gate from the harbor road into our new house, an...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• AUTHOR’S NOTE
• FOREWORD
• PROLOGUE
• PART I-VIS
• PART II-DALMATIA AND CROATIA
• PART III-BOSNIA
• PART IV-SLOVENIA
• GLOSSARY
• MAPS
• LINDSAY ROGERS