[ Post a Response | pentrace message board ]
Posted by Len Provisor
on November 8, 2009, 12:47 pm
HEADQUARTERS FIFTH INFANTRY DIVISION
Public Relations Office
WITH THE FIFTH INFANTRY DIVISION IN FRANCE 28 NOV 44
A jackknife, a fountain pen and extraordinary presence of mind of an infantry company aid man of the 5th Infantry Division contributed to the most remarkable piece of battlefield surgery yet brought to light in this war. The surgery performed was a "tracheotomy" or windpipe operation and the battlefield surgeon was Private Duane N. Kinman, 19 year old medical aid man for Company B of the 2nd Infantry regiment whose home town is College Place, Washington.
Here's the story: On the 10th of November, pushing toward Metz, Company B of the 2nd was attacking the village of Louvigny. The Germans were resisting chiefly with mortars and automatic weapons and one mortar shell fragment caught a rifleman of Company B in the throat. (Injured man's name is Private Henry Roon, Company B but it can't be used of course).
The rifleman fell prostrate in the mud and lay thrashing about from the pain caused by the shrapnel that had slashed through his throat muscles in what the medics later called "a perforating wound of the neck, with the wound exit over the tracheal area and fractured trachea". Nearby, Private Kinman was binding up a chest wound and fractured ankle of Staff Sergeant Theodore Auter, Company D, who was safely evacuated a little later. Seeing the other rifleman thrashing about, Kinman quickly finished attending Auter's wounds and rushed over to the other man.
He saw that the infantryman was turning blue in the face, gasping, and evidently suffocating to death from the injury to his windpipe which was cutting off his breathing. He was thrashing wildly around and 2nd Lt. Edwin M. Eberling, Company B platoon leader, from Lincoln, Nebraska, crawled over through the mortar barrage and machine gun fire to help Kinman.
Eberling grabbed the rifleman and held him down. Kinman whipped out his jackknife. The rifleman made protesting motions with his hands which Kinman overruled with: "I don't like to do this, but it's the only way you're gonna live."
Then, without wasting anytime in deliberation and with perfect presence of mind and recollection of two lectures given him a year previous in basic training, Kinman prepared to perform an operation which is delicate under the best of surgical conditions. He knew he had to open up the windpipe and he knew he had to have a tube or wedge to insert to keep it open. He noticed the fountain pen in the patient's pocket so he took that.
Then, with machine guns chattering all around, with mortar shells still landing in his vicinity, with a muddy field for an operating table, a gray sky for light, and his jackknife for a scalpel and without benefit of any anesthetic or drug, Kinman cut into the wounded man's throat. He felt for the windpipe as blood spurted out on his hands and, carefully avoiding cutting the jugular vein, made a longitudinal one and one-half incision in the man's windpipe, below the point of fracture. A lateral incision would have been fatal; a slip of the knife into the jugular vein would have been fatal, but he made the cut cleanly.
Next he slipped the rounded end of the infantryman's own fountain pen into the incision to keep the cut open and told the man: "Now keep that pen in your windpipe and you'll be okay. You can breath through your nose or mouth, but if you keep your windpipe open with the pen you can breath through the cut I made."
In a few minutes, the wounded man was breathing better and appeared to understand the directions for keeping the pen in his windpipe. Kinman and Eberling pulled him to his feet then and supporting him under the arms, walked him over to a medium tank of Company A of the 735th Tank BN, which was in support. As the attack's success became assured, the tank took Kinman and his patient and a few other hitchhikers back a quarter-mile to the battalion aid station. The infantryman walked into the aid station, supported by Kinman.
The battalion surgeon, Capt. Benjamin Seltzer of Daytona Beach, Florida, stared at the remarkable field expedient in wonderment, and, having no facilities to improve upon it, quickly evacuated by ambulance the infantryman who had been standing up, breathing through his throat without much difficulty and occasionally twirling the pen in his throat to keep the passage open and admit air.
When he arrived at the clearing platoon of the 5th Medical Battalion, the surgeon on duty, Capt. David Dunn of Westminister, Maryland, marveled at the patient, who was almost nonchalant in his pen-holding manner by now, then removed the pen and inserted a regular tracheotomy tube.
From clearing he went to the 30th field hospital where his physical condition was so good that after a brief period of observation and "I'll be damned" exclamations by the ward surgeons the patient was evacuated to the 109th evacuation hospital without further treatment.
Capt. Dunn termed Kinman's action "timely, resourcefully daring, and intelligent". Major Charles D. Bohrer of the 4th Auxiliary Surgical Group of the 30th Field Hospital was so impressed he voluntarily wrote a letter of commendation praising Kinman's action and the "early and expert performance" of his duties under the most difficult possible conditions.
The Hero of the story, Private Kinman, has the average background of the company aid men. He completed two years of high school, with no more than the usual course in physical education. His chief interest was auto mechanics and his part-time civilian occupation was truck-driving. He was inducted into the army September 28, 1943, received basic medical training at Camp Barkeley, Texas. He joined the 2nd Infantry medical detachment as a replacement medic on September 13, 1944, as the 5th division was fighting in the Moselle river bridgehead south of Metz. He is five feet ten inches tall, weighs 160 pounds and is single.
Kinman figures he may go on to college, taking pre-medical and medical training, after the war. On the other hand, he is still interested in industrial mechanics and arts and may pickup where he left off before the war.
Pvt. Kinman and the Windpipe Operation
Official press release written by then Captain Campbell and forwarded on to 3rd Army PR section. It generated A LOT of interest. Kinman received a DSC and the United Press reporter who covered it got a $5 a week raise. We have done a cursory research and can find no other incident previous to this which mentions the use of a fountain pen to maintain a trachea cut open. HOWEVER, in this incident, the fountain pen was used purely as a wedge-it was not opened, unscrewed and the bottom part not used for breathing. A stick, albeit rather dirty, could just as well have been used.
Pvt Roon recovered completely from the emergency operation. Two other tracheotomies performed by surgeons that day were not successful.
When this story was printed, Pvt. Kinman was offered a full medical scholarship to (Case) Western University in Cleveland. He did not accept it.
Original citation for this article is not available
Responses:
www.pentrace.net
