Action (May 1941 - Mar 1958)

October 1943 3 Red Cross PhoU BLOOD PLASMA ON THE BUNA FRONT: Blood plasma sent to our fighting men in New Guinea is shown here as it is prepared for transfusion near the Buna front lines by men of the Army Medical Corps. The Army and Navy have asked the Red Cross to collect 4,000,000 pints of blood this year, for use all over the world. Jt Wall n ormun ELcU i/^aine E was only a kid, and as he lay on his face retching his heart out on a Sardinian hillside, with blood from the wound gouged in his belly by a red-hot piece of German high-explosive shell seeping into the dust, there was something poignantly babyish about the curl of the damp, sweating hair down over the curve of his neck where it entered the battlestained blouse. He was the Joe Smith of a million American sandlot baseball diamonds; he was the delivery boy from the corner grocery store with his cheerful whistle; he was the smiling face in the elevator that whisked you up to your office on mornings of peace. But the only whistle he could manage now was his labored breathing as he gasped out his life in a faraway country; and that wide, freckled grin had become a twisted grimace of starkest agony as death hooked its icy fingers into his vitals and the bright crimson tide of American youth gushed forth . . . then stopped. And above him, helpless, stood the Medical Corps men; and sweat was on their faces too and you wouldn't have wanted to face that accusing look in their eyes — YOU wouldn't! — because if you did, you might remember how you had scanned with a casual glance the printed appeals for donors to the national blood bank, mentally resolved to do something about it — and then forgotten it or, giving in to a squeamish moment, had skipped it altogether. And so, Joe Smith lay there under the hot sun, his body drained and still, with that awful waxen pallor of the dead — because of that Dint of blood which your healthy body could have spared without impairment but which you carelessly or cravenly withheld. He gave his blood. Why didn't you? The tough, stocky sergeant on bleak and fog-shrouded Attu raised his head cautiously above the spur of rock while he motioned the men of his patrol to lie flat behind him while he looked over the bleak and rock-strewn ground ahead. He was one of the spearheads of ^he American force that was thrusting the murderous Jap back from the mainland of North America; pushing a merciless enemy farther and farther back from you and me. He hadn't had much sleep lately and his stomach cramped with hunger now and again because that shelling on the beach three days ago had destroyed the supplies; but he wasn't thinking of that; he was thinking that they'd better get ahead be cause time was an element in this attack if he was to help keep his country safe — and there wasn't too much time. So he shaved a little off his usual battlewise caution as his deep-sunk eyes searched every cranny in that desolate valley below. Then came the flat crack of a sniper's rifle and a crimson stain spread between the sergeant's eyes and his equipment clattered as he dropped. Two of his patrol ran to him and dragged him back; and they saw instantly that he hadn't much time either now. So they got back, somehow, to the Aid Post and they did what they could . . . but it wasn't enough. It was half a pint of blood short. And so his body lay out under the frosty Aleutian stars that were no colder now than that American sergeant's inert clay. He had plenty of time now. He had all eternity. And YOU had saved forty-five minutes; that three-quarters of an hour it would have taken you, and which you had set aside, to donate to the blood bank and then cancelled because of that important matter — what was it now? — which suddenly had come up. Time was of the essence and it made you a few dollars and you felt good that night