Paradoctor

In a bomber crash near the Continental Divide in Colorado, four of the ten-man crew had been killed. Two survivors, less seriously injured, had walked 14 hours before they found help. Soon a bomber, with an Army doctor aboard, was on its way to the rocky ledge where the four injured men lay. The doctor first dropped a parachute load of supplies from the circling bomber, then jumped himself. He landed in a tree, fell 20 ft., but scrambled up unhurt. When the main rescue party arrived (by land) nearly four hours later, the patients had been fed, bandaged, drugged to ease their pain. They could not say enough in praise of their paradoctor.

The doctor is small, husky Lieut. Amos Little of Marlboro, Mass., Dartmouth '39, Johns Hopkins Medical School '42, who began parachuting at the U.S. Forest Service Parachute School at Seelay Lake,

Mont., finished his training at Fort Benning.

An expert jumper, Dr. Little now gives demonstrations in precision parachuting, lands within 20 ft. of an X marked on the ground. This was his 23rd jump, his first nonpractice jump.

He is one of six paradoctors attached to the Search and Rescue Section of the Second Air Force. Together with six others whom the Second Air Force trained at Buckley Field, Colo. for Arctic search and rescue work, they are the only specially trained parachuting doctors in the U.S. armed forces. The Arctic paradoctors have already left the U.S. Since January, the remaining six, stationed at widely separated bases west of the Mississippi, have rescued 79 men--a good return for the $30,000 spent on their training and the $2,000 spent to equip each paradoctor.

On the basis of their collective performance, Second Air Force headquarters thinks every air force should get itself some paradoctors. On the basis of Lieut. Little's individual performance, Major Willard M. Fletcher, who heads the Search and Rescue Section, last week recommended him for a medal.

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