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The medical organization was started the afternoon of the tear gassing incident. A bunch of people gathered together in a Kay Spiritual Life center and decided that if the

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hostilities were going to continue over any length of time, that there ought to be some kind of formal medical organization among the students. There were originally about five

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of us who kind of just came together because we happened to meet at the same place at the same time and had some kind of medical experience. A couple of us were ex-army

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medics, and a couple of others were just interested in that sort of thing. We collected several people as we went along.

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We actually had more people than we could deal with. We at one point had about a hundred people that either wanted to be medics or serve food, or

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even just stand around and tear sheets. When we started to organize the thing, a couple of people from GW walked in who had been at Maryland and medical students at GW had organized a medical cadre, and it thought it would be a good idea if

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they set it up at other schools in the area, and they offered to stick us with supplies and even people if we needed it. So it became a kind of a almost a paramilitary organization among the area schools.

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Everybody tried to function mainly as first aid facilities and what are called triage areas. Again, in a kind of a paramilitary sense, stationed somewhere near the action so that people who were injured could have immediate first

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aid and be evacuated to better medical facilities if they needed extensive treatment. There were people who had broken legs and allergy reactions to gas, concussions from thrown objects

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and so on who were taken from here by ambulance up to Sibley. We treated here on campus almost 3000 people altogether, uh, washing out people's eyes treated the same people several times for tear gas, so the figure is somewhat inflated.

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I'd say out of the hundred people who were injured enough to require some kind of first aid and a little more than a band aid, maybe 20 of those went to the hospital for one reason or another. We had a couple of people with broken legs, and a girl who had a

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very severe allergic reaction to the gas. We had to give artificial respiration to get her to a hospital, and there were several people who were struck by missiles, by tear gas cartridges or nightsticks or thrown rocks or

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what have you, that were sent to Sibley for x rays and treatment. The only treatment that we used for tear gas was copious running water. We poured water on all the exposed

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skin surfaces, hair, remove external clothing to eliminate any residual sources of tear gas. We were washing out eyes with a weak saline solution.

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The supplies we had ranged all the way from things like prescription drugs, bandages and various solutions and so on to sheets and blankets, army type stretchers, bottles of water, jugs of alcohol, a pretty broad spectrum of first

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aid supplies. There was only one type of gas used against people down there. It's a super pulverized powder

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which is held in suspension in the air when it's dispersed. We were organized into three sections the treatment section, which was concerned with injuries, and so on. The supply section, which was concerned with stealing things

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that we needed, and the mobile section, which is really the overflow from the other two. We had people who had things like jeeps and station wagons and Volkswagen buses and Econoline

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vans, with whom we placed a certain amount of equipment and 2 or 3 people. It was these people's job to function as Ambulances almost.

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They would be sent to a specific spot in one of the demonstration areas and told to sit and wait and act as a first aid station. They were shooting two kinds of

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missiles. There was a grenade that came in a 6 to 8 inch canister, a little larger than the diameter of a can of biscuits.

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Trigger, just like a hand grenade with a lever detonator. And this was just lobbed into the crowd.

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And the other things they were shooting was about a six inch, 55 millimeter projectile, which was an incendiary projectile which burned and produced gases that burned.

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And they were fired from a rifle with what they call a grenade launcher. And they have quite a fair range and a very high velocity for a projectile that size.

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The main medical problems with the tear gas were not the irritations caused by the gas, but things that happened because people reacted to it the way they did, people being jostled and pushed and falling over things and each other and

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becoming disoriented and confused. Don't you have a table? I can hear it. Oh, the changes that you went

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through. I don't think there was any change. I you know, I mean, from

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pre-strike to post strike during during the the actions. I mean, there was a lot of community spirit. Some of the biggest donators to the food over at Kay Spiritual Life Center were the sororities, you know, and there were a couple

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of sorority girls who came over and helped cook, and that really surprised me. Surprised a lot of the diehard radical type people, really.

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But they were really nice. And they were they were taking care of people, sleeping them in the sorority rooms and stuff like that, I think. And I don't know, it was really.

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I liked it better than for some reason, you know, people were nicer to one another and, you know, things were a lot more hectic and, you know, inside yourself they were a lot more hectic, you know.

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But, you know, I think people thought clearer and they were nicer to one another than they are normally. Yeah, I thought that I thought that for the first time that they had definitely gotten together some sort of community.

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Yeah. And then all of a sudden it fell apart, like the week after. Within the next two weeks, it just

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sort of went downhill. Yeah. Talk about that. There was a community and then it

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fell apart. Mhm. Can you make a little story out of that. Can I make a little story out of that.

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Well I don't know. Uh it seemed that one week everybody was, you know, here together and everybody was very much real and alive, you know, even guys you had never seen

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before, never talked to before or, you know, I'd seen about. But, you know, I thought they were, you know, they weren't your type of people or you just didn't know them, you know, uh, all of a sudden it became important to you about them.

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And then the next week, you know, next couple of weeks, it just sort of. Who are they? You know, it seemed to, you know, everybody just sort of rushed back

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from the closeness with which the actions, the strike held them together. I don't know whether that was because they were scared or what.

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Or maybe, you know, everybody was sort of scared and afraid of what they'd really gotten into, because I think a lot of people saw some things that they didn't want to admit during the strike, like, well, I don't know, maybe they saw

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that, like the national government wasn't as good or God or anything like that, or maybe that government wasn't good at all. Um, maybe they saw began to see a lot of the same faults in the and the government? Well, not.

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They began to see in themselves the same faults that they saw in government. And began to recognize them more closely.

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I think people began to think a little bit too much, and I think that scared them. And everybody just sort of, you know, rushed back very hurriedly into their selfish ways.

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I don't know, I don't know if that's a parable or not a story or what. I do know that. You know, one week it was

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everybody for everybody else, and then next week it was more or less everybody for himself. You know, like people were saying, well, I'm not going to take Incompletes because, well, I'm

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transferring or well, I've only got to do this one paper or something like that. You know, they made excuses. And, you know, everybody said, well, you know, I'm not really

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working, you know, but it seemed to me that everybody came out of the strike with, you know, their grades and their heads intact. It was a very middle class revolution. Very middle class.

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And, you know, like. Eat food because it was always there. And the sandwiches were heaps and heaps. You know, those big piles of sandwiches on the tables?

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Uh, we set up a whole assembly line just to produce peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and, you know, like there were 20 people on these on these tables. And one person would be, you know,

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a peanut butter man and just spread peanut butter, pass it on to the next person who glop jelly on it and closed it up and went on to a pile which were then wrapped in napkins. And then some people brought in like, I forget what it was 2000

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ham sandwiches already wrapped. So all together you could help me out. How many people are, you know,

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helping the volunteer? Uh, I don't know. There was one lady who, you know, really sort of brought the whole thing together. She.

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She did all the hot food cooking. Um, and she was in the film there for a bit. Uh. Anything with.

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and you know, like originally K was going to be, you know, just sort of like, uh, if somebody got hurt, we'd give them like a can of hot soup, but she turned it into a mass feeding operation. I don't know how many thousands of people we fed, but we.

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Made a soup and canned tomatoes and all that sort of stuff. And it was surprising what the dormitories turned out in the way of food. Everything from, you know, like

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S.S. Pierce, you know, and all these ritzy type things, like, I think there was one can of anchovies donated and.

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You know. I didn't realize the dorm. About 3 or 4, you know, and it wasn't as much as a meal as a continuous serving.

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You know, we started serving, you know, hot food generally around, you know, 11 12:00 and we worked through until like 8 or 9. And then you started making sandwiches for the next day. Uh, you know, at night.

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And breakfast was prepared for breakfast was usually slipshod with, you know, like, you know, whatever types of, you know, cold cereals we could give them and cups, you know, and dehydrated milk, which was really nice.

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Yum, yum. Uh, what was the menu for breakfast? Uh, cold cereal, nonfat dry milk. Um, Hawaiian fruit punch.

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I think it was. And, you know, other orange juices and stuff and oranges. We got oranges and apples, you know, we bought them in bulk. Huge cases.

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Um, beyond that, I can't really think of anything else that we did, um, for breakfast particularly, uh, there was one guy. Uh, what else went down where? Um. For lunch besides the

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sandwiches? Well, it was sandwiches and cold salads, and that's about it. Dinner. We tried to plan something more extravagant, you know, like tuna

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fish, stuff like that. Um. There were there any suggestions you could offer somebody, like.