Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 38

Decatur High School was among a handful of high schools in the Atlanta area that had an Army Junior ROTC program. Military science was not a required subject, but most of my friends took it, and my parents encouraged my brother and me to do it too.

I got off to a rocky start in the program. I liked the “Ike” jackets, but drill days were a different story. On these days we had rifles— M1s left over from World War II. We marched with them and had to master their nomenclature, such as their being “semiautomatic, gas-operated, air-cooled weapons that hold a clip of eight rounds.” We were required to know how to insert a clip into the rifle chamber and close it. Closing was tough. If you did not remove your thumb from the chamber quickly enough, the bolt would spring forward rapidly with something like 40,000 pounds of pressure per square inch and you would get an “M1 thumb.”

I am writing these words to reveal that I know what an M1 thumb feels like. My first attempt at removing my thumb from what I now call “the chamber jaws” of the rifle was unsuccessful. The result was that my thumb quickly filled up with blood and throbbed like the beat of a rogue rock band. Today this type of accident would send someone to the emergency room, but not then. My medical attention came from Sergeant Hacker, who was always smiling, had a beard like Richard Nixon, and had seen many M1 thumbs. After my company commander brought me into the ROTC office from the field behind the football stadium where we had drill, Sergeant Hacker immediately took over.

The remedy was to open the thumb and get the blood out. Proper equipment was required to do this, so the good sergeant took me to the chemistry lab, which was not in use that period. Next he lit a Bunsen burner and found a thin piece of copper wire. He heated the wire and instructed me to give him my thumb. I did, and as I looked on, he pushed the tip of the hot wire through my thumbnail. Blood came spurting out as if he had struck the mother lode of a newly drilled well. Somehow the blood did not get on the sergeant or me, but it rained down on several glass beakers. Relief came as the blood flowed forth. After the rush of the gush, it was simply a matter of covering the hole in my thumbnail by wrapping the thumb with adhesive tape. Next the surgical sergeant and I cleaned up the mess we had made and waited for the bell to ring, and I went to my next class.

It took a few weeks for the hole in my thumbnail to heal. Looking back, I am amazed at what Sergeant Hacker did, that my parents never questioned what went on, that school personnel never got involved, and that I did not miss my next class. After the “operation,” I learned to quickly remove my thumb when closing the chamber of my rifle. Fortunately, I never developed an excessive fear of Bunsen burners, cooper wire, or the unfamiliar!