A Surgeon in Leningrad
July 9, 2008 – 6:00 amAs mentioned in the previous entry, I am sharing a few excerpts of stories from Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose by Simmons and Perlina.
In her memoirs, Valentina, a surgeon, tells of her hospital experience during the winter of 1941-42. “The temperature in the hospital was below zero. The medicine froze, and the wounded, and the staff…The staff and the doctors worked in their winter coats, in hats, in boots. There were no lab coats. We put a sheet on over a coat and secured it at the back.
“Cold was not the only scourge of the long-suffering city. In Leningrad , there was no electrical power, transportation, water, food products…The city. Institutions, hospitals and private dwellings plunged into darkness…With a torch, I made my rounds of ten wards with 120-160 wounded men.
“In the difficult conditions of the blockaded city, with frequent debilitating air raids, shellings and bombings, the personnel did not only have to survive; they had to give their work their last ounce of strength.
“Medical personnel did not only have to admit, cure, and look after the wounded, but just as important, they had to keep up [the patients’] morale. To bolster their will to live, to get well. And how difficult it was for the weary youth and not-so-young women who were starving and in need of sleep!
“In Leningrad, there were 120-195 soldiers in the surgery department. After the relocation of our hospital to the third Belorussian front, we treated up to 465 wounded a day.”
Valentina tells of the many volunteers who helped look after the wounded, feeding them, reading newspapers, and writing letters for them. One of the volunteers was a professor’s wife, a patroness of the university clinic. Although emaciated herself, she gave her last ounce of strength to serve the wounded. Her professor husband died of starvation in 1941, and she died shortly thereafter.
It is estimated that over a million civilians died in the winter of 1941-42, some from the frigid conditions and many from starvation.
For more World War stories, go to www.peggeorge.com.
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