Originally published in The Seattle Daily Times, April 19, 1953
By William Plunkett
Times staff correspondent
Remarkable recovery: Pvt. Robert Lynch showed as much interest when he wiggled his toes as Capt. James Berger, center, and Col. Knox Dunlap, his surgeon. Lynch’s feet nearly were severed in the plane crash near Selleck Tuesday. Now, after the operation, he is expected to walk again. The casts on his legs were cut open so circulation to the damaged tissues would not be cut off. He was given a blood transfusion while the doctors examined him. Captain Berger was one of five doctors at the crash scene.
MADIGAN ARMY HOSPITAL, April 18—When Pvt. Robert Lynch wiggled his toes here yesterday, staff members gasped in amazement and marveled at the work of Madigan’s chief orthopedic surgeon, Col. Knox Dunlap.
Lynch, a survivor of the Selleck plane crash, entered the hospital with the bones in his ankles severed, his feet hanging only by frozen tendons.
Recovering: Willard Welch, another crash victim, ate lunch at the hospital. He is recovering from ankle and leg fractures. He was one of the first victims taken off the mountainside.
When Lynch got to surgery, we decided to take a chance and try to save his feet,” Colonel Dunlap said. “I washed and cleaned the bones, set them and sewed him up. Yesterday, I couldn’t believe it when he wiggled his toes.”
Lynch was suffering from loss of blood when rescuers reached him Tuesday afternoon at the scene of the crash, ten miles east of Selleck.
“I was thrown out of the plane,” he said yesterday. “All I remember is that I lurched forward. Luckily, I wasn’t caught underneath the wreckage.” Rescuers lashed Lynch to one of the plane’s doors and tobogganed him down the steep mountainside to a clearing, where a helicopter waited to take him to Selleck. There, doctors gave him a blood transfusion and put him aboard an ambulance. His feet, they said, would have to be amputated.
Col. E.E. Alling, hospital commandant, praised the hospital staff for its work in Tuesday night’s disaster when 17 of the 19 survivors of the crash were brought here.
“Every specialist in the hospital stayed up all night with these boys,” Colonel Alling said. At least one life was saved by the rapid surgical treatment and the unlimited amount of blood supplied by the Red Cross and our own blood bank.”
Victim: Pvt. James Grant smoked a cigarette in his hospital bed. Grant suffered an arm fracture in the crash but probably saved his life by grabbing a post to keep from being thrown forward. He was able to help the more seriously injured victims.
Two of the victims are still in serious condition with back injuries. They are Otis B. Fincham, Culpeper, Va., and Eugene Bankard, Baltimore. They will be transferred to hospitals in the east when their conditions improve.
“While several of the victims are still In bad shape, they’ll recover in time,” Colonel Alling said. “They’ve all talked with their families, and several families and relatives are on their way to visit with them.”
Both Ernest Rawling and William Maxwell, both of Washington, who were reported in serious condition immediately after the accident, were out of danger yesterday.
Capt. James Berger, who was one of the five doctors at the crash, said he had not expected to get all the victims in hospitals by Tuesday night.
“I’ve worked in several disasters and learn more each time,” Captain Berger said. “From this experience I learned that there should be good communications, and adequate number of stretchers and more manpower to carry stretcher cases.
“Had there been more stretchers and men earlier in the afternoon, we could have had all the injured evacuated two and a half hours earlier,” he said. “However, considering the overall confusion in any disaster of this type, I think it was handled well.
“The men were all cared for by doctors at the scene and no man suffered permanent damage from the delay.”
Captain Berger praised the Washington State Patrol and Tacoma Police Department for the ambulance escort between the emergency hospital set up at Selleck Elementary School and this hospital.
Talking it over: Pvt. Robert Costello, left, handed Pvt. Anthony Lacertoso a package of cigarettes when they saw each other for the first time since Tuesday’s plane crash near Selleck. They and the other crash victims were flying to Seattle from the East. Lacertoso was thrown against the pilot’s compartment and was pinned underneath the wreckage for several hours. Both men suffered back injuries and Lacertoso, a left-leg fracture. All the survivors are expected to recover. —Times photos by Ron DeRosa.
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