Tag: World War II
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Justice denied: The Katyn massacre, Kosciusko squadron, and the Polish soul
Gregory RuteckiOhio, United States “The Nazi terror intensified…Poland became the home of humanity’s Holocaust, an archipelago of death-factories…executions…and exterminations which surpassed anything…in…history.”1 —Davies “Germany…killed the prey (Poland)…Russia will seize that part of the carcass…Germany cannot use. It will play the…role of hyena to the German lion.”2 “I…order to kill without mercy men, women and children…
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Medics in World War II
Selection from Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose “Bravest man I ever saw . . . he came running right through the machine gun fire and put a tourniquet on my arm,” recounted an infantry man hit by a bullet that ripped right through his right upper arm. The medic got hit by the concussion…
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A writer and a doctor: What a physician’s account of Auschwitz can teach us about the ethics of story-telling in medicine
Christine HennebergSan Francisco, California, United States In writing this work I am not aiming for any literary success. When I lived through these horrors, which were beyond all imagining, I was not a writer but a doctor. Today, in telling about them, I write not as a reporter but as a doctor.1 The opening “declaration”…
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Lest we forget
Bradeigh GodfreySalt Lake City, Utah, United States “I’ve always hated the Germans,” he said to the medical student standing next to me. He was approaching 80 years old, too young to have served in World War II. Besides, he had a slight accent that the student had correctly identified as Dutch. It was unusual for…
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A memorable veteran
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece It was nine o’clock on a Monday morning and this was my last outpatient clinic. By the end of the week I would be finishing my hospital duties and return home after several years of training in Britain. The first patient that day was a very pleasant seventy-five-year old man who walked…
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A battered soul rebels
Anonymous As a maturing poet I have recently noticed my work has themes of redemption. I surmise this stems from the fact that both my parents are mentally ill from the effects of war and I was an abused child. My mother suffers from PTSD/paranoia, my father suffers from PTSD/intermittent explosive disorder, and I was…
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The “Bangka Island Massacre”: Australian military nurses in the Pacific War
Angharad FletcherLondon and Hong Kong “Civilian nurses, bound on errands of mercy among the worst underworld dens, are never in danger from the most hardened criminals. But Australia’s nurses were not safe from the Japanese. No British citizen forgets the name of Nurse Edith Cavell. Australia now has her own Edith Cavells to remember.”1 Sometime…
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Archibald McIndoe’s stance against the clinical hospital archetype and the importance of this for the recovery of burnt airmen in the Second World War
Alexander BaldwinBirmingham, UK The Second World War marked the beginning of a new generation of aerial warfare. The slow wooden bi-planes of the First World War were replaced by swift aerodynamic fighters, such as the Spitfire and Hurricane, and a new type of aircraft entirely: the heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command. However, the increased…