Without stoves, and with the surgeons required to operate in long, narrow, cramped ward tents, and Triage/Pre-Op duty assigned on a rotating basis, the cold, inconvenience and inexperience quickly resulted in a mounting backlog of surgical cases.

Eventually, the stoves did arrive and the surgeons now could operate without wearing their field coats, the transfusions would run and the ether vaporize without the help of hot water bottles.

Also, the "C.O." finally relented and allowed the surgery tents to be placed side-by-side and the common walls raised (as other hospitals already had learned to do). This created a large square operating theater with easy access to all the operating tables.

One team, Charlie Soracco, Andy Henderson and Don Jones, assumed the Triage/Pre-Op. duty, and they made sure that patients arrived in the O.R. adequately resuscitated with I.V. fluids and blood, with proper X-rays and sufficient crossmatched blood to get them through their operations.

With these improvements the backlog was finally cleared up.

One night when I was changing the hoses on the big tanks of anesthetic gases lying on the canvas floor of our operating tent, I accidentally scratched the back of my left hand. Within 6 hours I had chills, high fever and red streaks running up my arm, clear signs of a deadly (in those days) hemolytic strep. infection. We had received a supply of the newly discovered antibiotic, Penicillin, and I was given 5,000 units I.M. every 4 hours, only a fraction of the dose that would be employed today. It was effective, however, and I was back to my anesthesiologist 12 hr. shifts in two days.