It was a long time ago but that was a day I'll never forget.” The operation, onboard the USS Silversides (SS-236) turned out to be the war's most publicized surgical operation. “I was glad I was able to help,” he said. “The guy on the table was a friend of mine,” Albert said in an interview earlier this month. It was Christmas Eve, 1942, and Albert only had one thing on his mind and that was to help save his shipmate's life. Forget also the fact that an enemy Japanese destroyer was hovering over them and enemy aircraft was circling above.
Forget the fact that he was a radioman on a submarine far out at sea and 150 feet below the surface, assisting a pharmacist's mate (that had never performed an operation before) in an emergency appendectomy on a crew member that was laid out on the dining room table in the officer's wardroom.
Sixty-six years ago, as AFRH resident Albert Stegall handed his shipmate a scalpel, he didn't think about everything that could go wrong.
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