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Modified from the comic Non Sequitur, by Wiley
(click to enlarge)

Cordwood: More Poems from the Forgotten War

Ralph Jacobs, the author of CORDWOOD, A COLLECTION OF KOREAN WAR POEMS, is a treasured friend and a Harvard educated medical doctor. He served in Dog Medical Company, First Marine Division, in the Korean War.

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I served in the Marines from July 1950, through June 1951. . . I hope the poems will offer a personal lens for you to see and feel my experiences in Korea. Many of the events, situations, and dilemmas in these poems mirror what others have seen and felt in other wars."
Ralph Jacobs, from his Introduction
April, 2004

The four poems that follow are from Ralph’s third “chapter”: Winter and Early Spring, 1951. I will post poems from his final chapter, Late Spring, 1951, before the presidential election.


WINTER AND SPRING, 1951

A counteroffensive—
we Marines recapture rice paddies, villages
seized by the Chinese three weeks ago.

SALVAGED
Ambulanced to our field hospital—
six wounded GI’s—left
wounded in the snow weeks ago.
North Korean farmers risking death
had carried them into their huts,
fed them rice and tea by the fire,
helped by wives and children.

Phil gaunt but with a feeble smile—
wasted to the marrow,
has bilateral bronchopneumonia.
His punctured chest cavity oozes green.
We suction pus, insert drains,
start Streptomycin and penicillin.

The top of Ernie’s left foot—
a thick cotton dressing applied weeks ago
by a Chinese medic.
Unwrapped—
a swarm of maggots eating dead tissue—
nature’s beautiful debridement—
extensor tendon sheaths shine below.

We place their stretchers by our pot stove,
feed them Hershey bars, and listen.

CORDWOOD
Screaming news—600—heavy casualties
from the Marines, the Army, ROK* troops.
Everything is coming our way—right now.

Evaluating the wounded in Receiving:
I order shock therapy stat.
I order others to the holding tent—
belly surgery, chest surgery, many for major debridement.*
Pressing corpsmen to quick-step and IV and IM meds,
surgical preps, IV plasma and blood.
Snarling suddenly—too low a blood supply.
Commanding by phone--more blood by copter.

Scrubbing up to insert chest tubes in the short of breath.
Sheathing hot water bottles around frozen blood units.
Surveying surgery—all teams with shiny retractors bent over
wide-open bellies, wide-open chests,
large shrapnel wounds being debrided—
then lavaged, lavaged, lavaged.
Supervising corpsmen casting arms, legs,
dressing face wounds—
dressing genitals, abdomens, thighs.
Wolfing a Tootsie Roll for supper.

Lifting stretchers, flipping sutures, giving open drop
ether anesthesia throughout the night.
Devouring a Spam sandwich at midnight.

Overcast dawn, bitter 20 degrees below, light snow falling.
A wall of cordwood:
Two piles, each four frozen bodies high,
line our path to the mess tent.

*Republic of Korea
**removal of dead tissue and foreign material


INSTRUCTIONS
A stretcher in our hospital tent—
a Korean mother,
a six-year-old girl clings
to her quilted jacket.
Shell fragments had thundered—
flung her against her stove
Her right upper arm—
a triangle pointing backward—

I flush the wound with saline,
Pluck out clothing with forceps,
necrotic tissue with scissors,
smooth the plaster of Paris into
a hanging cast from shoulder to hand,
Ace-wrap the cast to her body,
write on it in Korean—
Please don’t take off for three months
—until May.

One month later our hospital
is 100 miles north in rugged mountains.
On a mountain path two men plug along
with a patient on a stretcher,
a small child dogging their footsteps,
through rain and sleet.

My patient—castless.
Her fracture grates.
I’m pleased to see her flesh wounds healed.
I reapply that cast
And plead—Please,
please don’t take off for three months
—until June.


BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOUNDED
On post-op rounds one morning
I attend patients from seven countries
lying on a row of stretchers.

The small Korean boy—
the plastic repair of his hand looks fine.
A US marine in a leg cast has
a fracture from a mortar wound.
The Royal British Marine has good bowel sounds
since belly surgery.
His Cockney accent I understand.
The Frenchman’s breathing improves
since chest surgery.
His English is much better than my French.
The Aussie with his broad accent
thanks us Yanks for his face-neck repair.
The tough looking Greek—large dressings
over his lumbar spine and right thigh look OK.
The wiry Turk looks even tougher.
I check his arm and side bandages.
We shake hands.

Poems from Jacobs’ first and second chapters of poems: Trip to Korea, Inchon and Seoul Campaigns, and the Chosin Reservoir Campaign can be read on this blog. In addition, Spectrum Blog has previously posted a piece I submitted in which Jacobs’ poem, Cordwood, is featured.)

“Cordwood” can be purchased from Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Bl., Corte Madera (415-927-9016) or Ralph Jacobs, 55 La Costa Ct, Novato, CA 94947 (415-898-6064).

I’m posting this cartoon because it was rejected for publication in Kid’s View.

From the comic Opus, by Berkeley Breathed
(click to enlarge)

Revelation Seminars Just Aren’t What They Used to Be!

From the comic Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis
(click to enlarge)

Sorting Out Belief, Faith, and Religion

“Beliefs are unprovable propositions about reality; faith is trusting that those beliefs are true, and religion is a system of communal behavior designed to enforce and reinforce faith in the correctness of those beliefs.

“Beliefs should not be confused with facts or hypotheses. Facts and hypotheses are testable; beliefs are not. That is why you need to have faith in God but not in gravity. Because beliefs are not testable, they need not change. Beliefs only change when experience makes faith in them indefensible.

“When scientists demand that myth conform to physics, and religionists demand that physics conform to myth, we get silly religions and bad science. We needn't choose between science and religion, we only have to insist that each be true to its calling.”

Rabbi Rami Shapiro in Spirituality and Health / Sept, Oct, 2008

Leigh Ruben

That is the famous Leigh Ruben of Rubes fame. He invited me to attend his “cartoonie” presentation in Sacramento, and I went, bought seven of his cartoon books, and posed with him. That picture was a failure, so you, dear reader, are spared another shot of my mug.

Leigh is a great guy, very funny, down-to-earth, and modest about his amazing talent. He is syndicated in 400 newspapers, and has graciously allowed my to “modify” some of his cartoons on my blog.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. (Paul)

Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the Law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. (Jesus)

Comic from Rubes, by Leigh Rubin.
(click for enlarged image)