Thursday, February 25, 2010

My Sanaritan Story

My Samaritan story

This reminds me of the parable as told in the 10 chapter of Luke as Jesus told to the lawyer about the man was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They beat the poor man and left him on the road to die. A priest happened to come by but ignored him and past him by. A Levite came by and crossed over to the other side of the road and passed him by. But the good, Samaritan treated him and bandaged his wounds and took him to the inn and paid the innkeeper to take care of him.

This reminds me of an incident when I was in the military. I had an automobile; I believe it was a whippet. I had purchased it from another soldier who was being shipped out for over seas. As I remember I paid him $50.00, for it. I had never heard of an automobile by that name and I have not ever seen another one since. This was probably in the year of 1943 or early 1944. Another soldier friend of mine had been in town, which was Gainesville Texas. As we were going back to camp, which was Camp Howze, Texas when we came up on an automobile accident. I do not remember much of the details about the accident but I remember that there were two elderly civilians a man and his wife were bleeding quiet a bit. They were semi consentience. There was very little traffic on the road then and there were not any other vehicles there. I did not know where the civilian hospital was located. There were several soldiers there but no civilians there. It seems that they had run into a bus full of soldiers. I asked my friend and some of the other soldiers to help me load the injured couples into my car. I told my friend that we were going to take them to the military hospital. He advised me not to do that. We both knew that we were not supposed to do that. I told him that they were going to have medical attention very soon or they were not going to make it.

He and I were both medical technicians at the hospital and we knew they had emergency crews on call for emergencies. We carried them to the emergency room and my major was the doctor was the officer on duty that night. He chewed me out very much, and told me that I could be court marshaled for bringing civilians to the Army hospitals. He told me that would cost the government several hundred dollars to pull all these doctors and men and nurses to work in the operating room. I told him that I was very sorry about doing that, but I did not know what to do. I told him that I did not know where the civilian hospital was located, and I believed that they were going to have medical attention very soon. He told me that it would be very expensive use the operation room and all the medical supplies. And they would have to stay in the hospital for a long time. My friend and I both stayed on with the emergency crew and worked with them. The man was admitted in the hospital in my orthopedic department until he was well enough to be transferred to the civilian hospital. The woman was admitted to the nurse’s hospital department until she could be transferred to civilian hospital.

My major told me again that night that was a dumb thing that you did. But I knew that he was not going to recommend me be court marshaled or recommend me for punishment. He told me a few days after that incident. He told me that we probably saved the lives of these two people, by getting them to the hospital as soon as we did. I told him then if we saved their lives, then that was what we wanted to do by bringing them to the military hospital. I told him that I knew that we were not suppose to bring civilian people to the Army hospital but I knew they were not going to live unless they got medical attention very soon, I knew that I could be court marshaled, but I had to take a chance on doing it, so if I had gotten court marshaled then it would have been the effort and expense was worth what we did.

John

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