“Hands are falling”: February 23 made me remember the exploits of military doctors

by time news

Marshal Rokossovsky gave a military brief, aphoristic assessment of the most important of the army services: “The wounded won the war!”

Military doctors returned to service 72% of the wounded. It is difficult to take everything into account, especially because of the repeated wounds and, accordingly, healings. But, according to various estimates, up to 22 million fighters were saved. If not for the feat of doctors, the male population of the USSR would simply not have been enough until the Victory.

There are other calendar occasions to gratefully remember exactly the military doctors: the two-year anniversary of the fight against the pandemic coincided with the 390th anniversary of the first medical institution in Russia – the Aptekarsky Prikaz (1632).

In addition to “reasons” there are deep reasons. Today, the most important resource in the fight against the same pandemic is the “degree of trust” in vaccines, masks, and medicine in general. All the accumulated national memory about “people in white coats” and with epaulettes works for this indicator, together with acting doctors. The highest degree of dignity of a Russian doctor is military doctors of the Great Patriotic War.

Like the word “soldier”, which unites everyone, from a private to a marshal, the words “military medic” unite military doctors and famous “nurses” who carried the wounded from the battlefield. Their payment for the Victory: out of 700,000 military doctors, about 88,000 died.

A beautiful girl, 19-year-old Valeria Gnarovskaya, on the Stalingrad front struck experienced soldiers with courage. Valeria managed to provide medical assistance to 300 soldiers. In September 1943, German tanks broke through to the medical battalion. Valeria with a bunch of grenades crawled up to the tank, threw it, stopping it at the cost of her life. She was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

16 hours a day is still the usual workload of a field surgeon; on days of big battles, they worked for two days without sleep.

The surgeon Alexandra Ivanovna Zaitseva said: “We stood at the operating table for days. They stood, and the hands themselves fall. The legs were swollen, they did not fit into tarpaulin boots. The eyes are so tired that it is difficult to close them. They worked day and night, fainting from hunger … There is something to eat, but there is no time.

Nurse Maria Alekseeva recalls: “Liza Kamaeva came only after graduating from the 1st Medical Institute. During the battle, up to 500 people entered the medical battalion. When the required blood type was not at hand, Liza lay down next to the wounded man, made a direct blood transfusion, got up and continued to do the operation. Seeing that she staggered, barely standing on her feet, I went up to her and quietly whispered in her ear: “I’ll wake you up in two hours.” She replied: “In an hour.” And then, leaning against my shoulder, she fell asleep.

But even thousands of kilometers from the front, the hands and thoughts of military doctors worked with the same tension. The songs “One Hundred Hours of Happiness”, “You know, there will still be!” written to the verses of the poetess Veronika Tushnova, a doctor and daughter of a doctor-scientist. The famous lines “Do not renounce, loving” Veronika wrote in 1944 after a 12-hour shift in a Kazan hospital.

Doctor Yury Gorelov recalls the everyday life of the Siberian evacuation hospital: “When something was missing, doctors were engaged in invention and design. Lieutenant colonel of the medical service N. Lyalina developed an apparatus for healing wounds: a fumigator-smoker. Nurses A. Kostyreva and A. Sekacheva invented a frame bandage for the treatment of burns of the extremities. Major of the medical service V. Markov designed an electric probe to determine the location of the fragments in the body. In Prokopievsk, doctors invented a special folding bed, a dry-heat disinfection chamber, bandages made from rags, and vitamin drinks made from pine needles.

Pandemic? In the Great Patriotic War, it was important to save soldiers from epidemics. In 1941, immunologists Nikolai Alexandrov and Nina Gefen developed the world’s first polio vaccine against seven infections: cholera, typhoid, tetanus, two types of paratyphoid and two types of dysentery. Previous methods, which required three vaccinations within 30 days, were not applicable in military conditions.

Like the army as a whole, military medicine is strong with tradition, and there is already a world-class figure here. Nikolai Pirogov’s patients were Nekrasov, Tchaikovsky, Otto von Bismarck. The hero of the then Europe, the wounded Giuseppe Garibaldi, was unsuccessfully treated by the best doctors in Italy, France, England, but managed to save the Pies, which Garibaldi remembered all his life. In 1870, the International Red Cross asked him to inspect the military-sanitary institutions of the Franco-Prussian war, the trip became an international triumph for Pirogov.

He was the first to use ether anesthesia back in 1846, and in the Crimean War he first used a plaster cast. Near the besieged Sevastopol, he examined 20,000 wounded, performed 10,000 surgical operations, but … he found the time – he carefully examined the poor unknown young man, already “sentenced” by St. Petersburg doctors (“transient consumption”) and who came for the last hope to Dmitry Mendeleev’s front-line hospital .

St. Luke of Crimea (Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-Yasenetsky), a great doctor, scientist, created entire scientific directions in anesthesiology and purulent surgery. The Stalin Prize was awarded to Archbishop Luka (and given to orphanages by them) in 1946, but the work it marked – “Late resections for infected gunshot wounds of the joints” – was published in the pre-victory 1944. Doctor of Medical Sciences and Doctor of Theology treated his persecutors, raising the title of Russian doctor in the minds of his compatriots.

The case of April 2021 reminded us of the “external”, foreign policy dimension of our medical resource. Reports from world agencies with the announcement “Doctors from God”: in the city of Blagoveshchensk, in a burning clinic, doctors completed an open-heart operation.

And next to it is the Euronews story: Spain; doctors, staff, due to the COVID threat, all of them fled, leaving patients …

These two documentary reports could well form the impression of the European viewer: “What is it, we have to fight against Them? .. Having These behind our backs?!”.

That “valiant maneuver” of the Spanish (NATO) doctors involuntarily recalled a case from the combat practice of one front-line surgeon. My colleague, journalist Dmitry Surmilo, asked in more detail the famous actor, writer Ivan Okhlobystin, son of the colonel of the medical service Ivan Ivanovich Okhlobystin:

My father’s military service began in 1933. The Great Patriotic War went to Berlin. Among his awards are the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner, the Red Star, the Patriotic War II degree, the medals “For the Defense of Stalingrad”, “For the Capture of Berlin”, “For the Capture of Budapest”, “For the Capture of Koenigsberg”, “For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic war 1941-1945.

Guard Colonel of the medical service Ivan Okhlobystin often performed the duties of orderlies: in battle he carried the wounded on himself. I took him to the hospital and performed operations. In the award list for the Order of the Red Banner of Ivan Okhlobystin, it is written: “During the Kiev operation, he personally ensured the collection and evacuation of the wounded to the hospital with maximum speed. He himself was personally under fire on the front line and assisted the wounded soldiers. On an ambulance under vil. The Red Tractor went out for the wounded, picked them up under heavy mortar fire, firing from the machine gun. Under the farm Lizogubovsky at the time of the breakthrough of tanks on vil. Vyrovka personally organized the evacuation of the wounded to the rear and took the wounded out under machine-gun fire. Near the village of Kazatskoye, at the time of the breakthrough of the tanks, he personally organized the sending of the wounded to the rear and left, firing back from the Germans. During the withdrawal period, the 5th Airborne Brigade took out 18 seriously wounded people and delivered them safely to the Sumy hospital.

Colonel Okhlobystin recalled that battle: “He led the hospital out of encirclement, dragged an underoperated soldier on one shoulder, and held a light machine gun in the other. A regimental banner is wound around the body under the tunic … “.

“I am very sorry,” says Ivan, his son, “the photograph has not been preserved, but I remember it from childhood. Nazi counterattack, in the foreground a nurse killed by an explosion, one leg in a boot, the other without. The torn off parts of the top of the tent and the surgical table are visible, on which the father continues to operate, being, according to his recollections, shell-shocked and already half-conscious. And in the distance a bayonet battle with the Germans.

When the level of trust in medicine is counted as the most important resource, along with acting doctors, such as those from Blagoveshchensk, we should also be protected by the memory of Nikolai Pirogov, St. Luke of Crimea, Ivan Okhlobystin … This resource has served and must still serve Russia.

Oneri ferendo esse – translated from Latin, the language of medical opinions, “Withstand, able to bear the burden.”

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