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The following is a newspaper clipping from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette headlined "U.S. Wounded Get Fast Medical Care".
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Americans wounded in Korea receive fast medical care and transfer from combat areas ... and an infantry sergeant is home to tell of his personal experience.
Sgt. Hollis M. Bartlett Jr., son of Rev. and Mrs. Hollis M. Bartlett of 92 Coburn Avenue, arrived yesterday from Korean action for a 30-day furlough.
He was wounded several times during his six-month service in Korea.
"I was working with the mortar crew of Company L, 179th Regiment Combat Team, 45th Division," he related today.
"We were on outpost duty late at night, when our position was over-run by 'Chinks'. This was southwest of Chorwan during the first offensive of allies this year.
"The first concussion grenade to get me bounced off my eye. It exploded when it dropped to about my waist.
"If it had been a fragmentation grenade, that would have been 'it', but the concussion potato-mashers the 'Chinks' use are primarily for stunning us so that they can come in with bayonets.
"Sometime within the next few minutes I picked up two shrapnel wounds in the leg -- I don't remember feeling them, though.
"After the first grenade exploded off my temple, I dropped to the bottom of the trench. A medic started to bandage my eye.
"Suddenly I asked if he'd dropped anything -- for I felt something land on my boots as I sat on the ground. Before he could answer, another grenade lobbed in hitting my left leg.
"That's when we started changing our positions in the trench, but some 'Chink' was spotting us, for about this time the medic got hit. I told him to get some help for himself and I'd wait and care for my own wounds.
"Just then, a third potato-masher came sailing into the trench.
"This time I really got mad," said the sergeant, pushing aside his coffee cup and settling into his story.
"That last one landed on my rifle. The explosion blew apart the mechanism, so I heaved it at the next 'Chink' that tried to make the trench."
Sergeant Bartlett's anger was based on the fact he had "spent a good 15 minutes cleaning that gun just before we got 'action' that night."
He said he returned to a forward aid station -- a medical station nearest front-line action -- where he was bandaged. From here he was "jeeped" to a rear air station.
Then he was checked for internal injuries, need of blood transfusions or plasma, and his wounds were dressed.
"Next thing I knew I was shipped to a regimental collecting point for wounded. Here a helicopter dropped down and flew me and another GI to Seoul.
"From the front line station to Seoul it's approximately 45 air-miles," he said.
"And it was just three hours and some minutes after I arrived at the front-line station that I was wheeled into surgery, completely washed, shaved and ready for the medics.
"That's the kind of medic care that a guy can appreciate."
Sergeant Bartlett will report to Fort Devens after his furlough, for re-assignment. He is engaged to Miss Virginia E. Gray, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph C. Gray of Northboro. He was graduated from North High School and attended Clark University for a year before entering the army.
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