they are sick and need hospitalization. They don't want to risk missing any of the fight. On one of the cruisers which has been on duty with the Atlantic convoys, a seaman fainted one day on deck. He was taken to the sick bay for examination, which revealed a ruptured appendix and evidences of peritonitis.
"But you must have suffered considerable pain for some time before you fainted," the medical officer remarked. "Why didn't you report at sick call this morning?"
"Hell, sir, I couldn't be bothered," was the reply.
No small part of the responsibility of the ship's medical officers, and the hospital corpsmen under them, is to see that all cases do answer sick call; that even minor accidents are reported promptly, and any suspicious skin infections and colds are brought in for examination and treatment.
The chief medical officer of one of our ships on the Atlantic, while the ship was operating off the African coast, was called one afternoon by a seaman who appeared in the door of the sick bay with his eyes standing out of his head like apples.
"Doctor," he gasped, "there's a guy lying out here bleeding to death in his own guts!"
What had happened was that a sailor had slipped, fallen, been tossed by the roll of the ship and brought up against a bulkhead where the garbage cans were. He lay there, bleeding profusely, covered with potato peelings.
Even in war youngsters, when they get together off duty, play tricks on each other and have a tendency to roughhouse. Occasionally accidents happen, as these do among the undergraduates of any college. On one of the cruisers escorting military transports to northern Ireland, a lad was showing off by chinning himself on the pipes in the compartment. He lost hold and fell, injuring himself painfully. He was promptly examined, and it was found he had ruptured his spleen. The convoy was moving through bad weather and moving fast to keep away from enemy submarines and planes. It was impossible to slow down the ship, and the
