While in Germany, there were several cases each winter of people falling through the ice, some for only minutes; all died. The first responders in every case were the Germans. Little or nothing was done in terms of life-saving efforts despite a growing body of evidence that cold water drownings can be saved. At the time cases of people surviving, even after extended periods of time in the water. Every Friday we had Grand rounds for the guys pulling duty over the weekend, we did this so that we had in depth knowledge of every in-patient in the facility. The subject of survival with cold water drowning came up all through the winter months.
We had two 5-year-old boys who went through the ice at a pond in one of the satellite off-base housing units. The Germans responded and did nothing but simply pronounce them dead. The hospital's administrator got me out of the dentist's chair to roll out and get the boys. The Pediatrician got the ER ready to take the boys, and the base surgeon and I went for the kids. The boys had been in the water about 20 minutes. We literally took them from the Germans and began cold water rescue back to the base. We went all out with two full teams, We brought infant warmers and even used warmed humidified oxygen with our anesthesia machines. We worked for a couple of hours with some positive responses early on, but in the end, we lost both of the boys. It was one of the saddest days I have been through to lose the two boys; I thought we had a shot at good outcomes. The morale at the facility went to rock bottom and stayed there for a good week. I believe that if they had called us first, we could have pulled it off. We lost a good 15 minutes with the boys out of the water with nothing going on; frustrating.
