War Story

While playing checkers in Rivers End, Dr. Christian recalls an experience from his service as a medical officer during the First World War. In a village behind the lines he met a terrified young soldier everyone called Slim, who announced that he would desert rather than move to the front and challenged Christian to shoot him if he tried to leave. Instead of condemning him, Christian admitted that everyone was frightened and got Slim talking about the Indiana farm where he grew up and the farm of his own he dreamed of someday owning beside a river. Christian urged him to hold onto that picture strongly enough to carry him through the fear. Slim returned to his unit, was later brought into Christian's overcrowded dressing station badly wounded, and Christian defied orders limiting treatment in order to operate and give him a chance to live. Christian never learned what became of him. Years later in Rivers End, he is called to a newly purchased farm where a man named Catherwood is gravely ill from an infected cut that was neglected because he and his wife had spent nearly everything securing the farm. Under ether the patient relives the wartime encounter, revealing that he is Slim. Christian recognizes him and again uses the same hard-won dream of a farm by the river as something to fight for. Slim survives. Unable to pay much in cash, he settles the doctor's bill with firewood and eggs, and Christian tells Judy that the farm itself did more to pull the man through than any medicine he gave him.

This Dr. Christian broadcast aired on February 20, 1938. It is listed as episode 16 in the archive. CBS Radio Network carried the broadcast. The cast includes Jean Hersholt and Rosemary De Camp. Other credited names include Art Gilmore as announcer.

The surviving recording runs about 29 minutes. The broadcast is also associated with Vaseline.