Appendicitis doesn’t normally amount to a major threat—unless you get it on the North Bank of the White River in Northern Yukon in November 1942. The you need bush pilot Les Cook and his Norseman Monoplane.
Comrades place the young soldier on a litter and carry him two miles to the river. The bridge isn’t finished but they lay planks across the gaps and carry him across. From there a field ambulance carries him back to the Donjek camp.
But appendicitis requires surgery and that calls for a surgeon. Major Norberg radios Whitehorse for an evacuation plane. And they wait. Apparently evacuation pilots hesitate to fly into the teeth of a Northern Yukon storm. They wait in vain. Major Norberg radios again, explain that the patient can’t wait any longer for evacuation, the surgeon (s) need to come to Donjek. Appendicitis can become urgent very quickly.
Enter Les Cook and two Army surgeons who volunteer to brave the weather between them and Donjek. Cook flew past Donjek in the snow, saw the white and knew he had to go back. On the ground soldiers scrounged vehicles, lined them up along a sand flat with their headlights lighting the “runway”. Cook brought them down through the snow and an ambulance delivered the surgeons to the headquarters building.
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Waiting for their arrival, the soldiers had hurriedly turned the front of the building into an operating room, hung blankets to wall it off. Now the surgeons rigged an ether mask, put the patient to sleep, opened him up and fixed the appendicitis.
The head honchos in Whitehorse awarded the surgeons and Cook the legion of merit. Cook didn’t receive his. He crashed his plane on a street in Whitehorse just a few days after his flight to Donjek.