Evening star., 1942-04-01
u. 5. Doctor Works
In Bomb-Wrecked
Burmese Town
Medical Missionary Aiding
Chinese Wounded in Hot
Bottle for Touneoo
By the Associated Press.

By the Associated Press.
ON THE TOUNGOO FRONT IN
BURMA. March 80 Delayed) DIR.
Gordon Seagrave, lone American
medical missionary who set up an
emergency hospital In the center
of a bomb-wrecked and deserted
Burmese town, is working with
superhuman energy to save the lives
of Chinese soldiers lacerated in the
desperate fighting on the Toungoo
front.
CThe New York office of the
Baptist Foreign Missions identi-
fed DR.. Seagrave as graduate
of Denison University in Ohio
and Johns Hopkins medical
school and said his wife and
their two youngest children re-
turned to the United States a
few days ago and went to Gran
vile, Ohio, where they joined the
two older Seagrave children)
DR.. Seagrave set up his operating
table three nights ago and since
then has been caring for the wound
ed almost without rest.
10 Nurses Assist.
American and English volunteer
ambulance drivers trucked the vic
tins from crude dressing stations
at the front. Ten nurses from
Karen Theological Seminary, who
had been trained by DR.. Seagrave
during his years at the Baptist
built Harper Memorial Hospital at
Markham, In the Burmese Shan
states, assisted him.
DR.. Seagrave officially heads what
Is called the Harper Memorial Hos
pital mobile surgical unit and ranks
as a lieutenant colonel in the field.
He formed this unit after the out
break of the Pacific War by going
into bombed Rangoon and offering
to serve AFRAID victims or troops
in action. Within 48 hours he had
been put under orders by the Brit
1sh Army, had been given six trucks
loaded with blankets and medical
supplies, and, with volunteer drivers
was sent back to the Shan States
where medical facilities for the Brit
ish troops Chinese Allies were ex-
tremely limited.
Among his drivers were William
H. Cummings Of Newton Center
Mass, an agricultural missionary
from Markham; the Rev. D. w
Graham of Pennsylvania, stationed
at Karen Theological Seminary;
DR.. P. Geren of Eldorado, Ark, and
DR.. H. B. Wilmington, an English
man, and his Connecticut-born wife
All were lecturers at Judson Col
lege in Rangoon, which was closed
because of the war.
On pine-forested hill in Eastern
Burma DR.. Seagrave established his
base in crude bamboo huts. From
there his medical unit-four mis-
sionary surgeons and IS nurses
maintained contact with Chinese
field commanders as much as 200
miles distant, and organized small
hospital and dispensaries in these
out-of-the-way places.
Travel Twisting Roads.
From there the doctors, riding
snorting, quarter-ton jeep trucks of
United States manufacture, travelled
the narrow, twisting roads, up the
sides of mountains and down deep
ravlnes, to reach the troops. But
many of those forces were stationed
miles away from any roads, so that
medical service and supplies had to
go in with the help of coolies and
mules.
Even the fact that Chinese Gen.
eralisSimo Chang Kai-shek recently
has sent some of his own medical
staff into Burma has lifted little of
the burden from the shoulders of
the American volunteers, who for a
considerable period were the only
surgeons attached to the Chinese
expeditionary force.