Navy Hero to Receive Medal for 1942 Surgery at Sea

 From a story on National Public Radio:

In Sept. 1942, as the Japanese forces
continued to hold the South Pacific, the USS Seadragon entered the
enemy waters of the South China Sea. Aboard the Navy submarine, Seaman
1st Class Darrell Rector was suffering from stomach pains, but with no
doctor on board, he had turned to Pharmacist’s Mate Wheeler B. Lipes
for help.

Lipes, whose only medical experience was three years as a hospital
lab technician, immediately recognized Rector’s symptoms as those of
acute appendicitis. If his appendix wasn’t removed, Rector would die.

Beneath
the sea, Lipes set up a surgical unit. He prepared common kitchen
instruments to work as medical equipment — spoons for retractors and a
tea strainer lined with gauze as an anesthesia mask. With no formal
surgical training, Lipes performed an emergency appendectomy — the
first major surgery aboard a submarine. Rector survived, but died two
years later in the sinking of the USS Tang.

Although the historic
surgery became firmly established in Navy lore, Lipes — now 84 —
never received any official recognition for his feat. But on Sunday,
Feb. 20, over 60 years after the submarine surgery, Lipes will be
awarded the Navy Commendation Medal for saving a fellow crewman’s life.

Being ex-Navy myself, I’m a total sucker for this kind of story — go read it all.