Pacific Stars and Stripes,
Aug. 16, 1952
By Charles Vogel
(Editor's Note: Air Force 1st
Lt. Charles Vogel, Philadelphia, told in a United Press dispatch last
week how he found a seriously sick little girl in the streets of Seoul
and attempted to get her hospitalized. The child was treated instead
at a first aid station, taken to an orphanage and then put back on
the streets because there was no room for her).
SEOUL (UP)- The little girl I found covered with
maggots and nearly starved on a street in Seoul this summer is there
again.
She is in the same cramped position, lying on
her side in the street. This time she is dead.
THE POLICE DIDN'T take her to a hospital when
she needed care. They took her to a first aid station. The maggots
and flies had been attracted by that red protrusion from her abdomen.
When they turned her out from the orphanage I
guess she started walking around the streets again, looking for someone
who might remember her.
WHEN SHE WAS found this time people were still
walking by her, stepping over her and paying no attention. A boy on
his bicycle went out of his way, however, to avoid hitting her body.
A major told me the story. He had stopped in his
staff car to see if anything could be done. Of course, there wasn't.
I suppose the orphanage was overcrowded when they
told her to leave.
THERE ARE MANY children-thousands of them-like
that little girl.
I don't know how long she'll stay on the street
until someone moves her body.
When she was still alive a policeman not 25 feet
away calmly directed traffic, oblivious to her suffering as was everyone
else.
OF COURSE, SHE wasn't dead then. She could brush
off some of the flies with one hand. She could do nothing about the
maggots. And she was sucking at an ear of raw corn as if it were a
peppermint stick.
Her chances weren't good, but it seems to me she
could have been saved if somebody had wanted to save her.
PSS-091
