No Greater Love

It was a quiet morning in Korea. In a small valley,
there was a little wooden building with a corrugated
steel roof. It was an orphanage that housed many
young children who had lost their parents in the
war.

Suddenly, the quiet of the morning was shattered
when a mortar shell fell and landed squarely on top
of
the orphanage. The roof was ripped apart by the
blast
and pieces of steel roofing were blasted all through
the orphanage wounding many of the children. One
little girl was hit in the leg by the flying metal and
her
leg was immediately amputated just below her
knee.
She was laying in the rubble of the orphanage
quietly
when they found her. A tourniquet was
immediately
applied and a runner was sent to the MASH
hospital to
fetch medical help for the children.

When the doctors and nurses arrived, they begin
to
triage the wounded children. When the doctor saw
the
little girl, he realized that her greatest need at the
moment was blood. He immediately called for
records
from the orphanage to find someone with her blood
type. A nurse who could read and speak Korean
began to call out the names of all the children with
the
same blood type as the little girl. After a few
minutes
there was a group of wide eyed children
assembled.
The doctor spoke to the group and the nurse
translated, "Would one of you be willing to give this
little girl your blood?" The children looked shocked,
but no one said a word. Again the doctor
pleaded, "Please will one of you give her your
blood,
because if you dont, she is going to die!" Finally a
boy in the back raised his hand and the nurse laid
him down on a bed to prepare him for the taking of
his blood.

When the nurse ask for his arm in order to sterilize
the skin, the boy began to whimper. "Relax", she
said, "It wont hurt." When the doctor took his arm
and inserted the needle, he began to cry. "Does it
hurt?", the doctor asked. But the boy only cried
louder. "Im hurting him!", the doctor thought and he
tried to ease his pain and comfort him, but to no
avail.
Finally, after what seemed like a long time, the
blood
was drawn and the needle was removed. The little
boy
just laid and sobbed for a few minutes.

After the blood was given to the wounded girl and
her
condition was stabilized, the doctor was curious.
He
took the Korean speaking nurse back over to the
little
boy and told the nurse to ask him, "Did it hurt?"

The boy said, "No, it did not hurt."

"Then why were you crying?", the doctor asked.

"Because I was afraid of dying", the boy said. The
doctor was stunned! "Why did you think you would
die?" With tears in his eyes the boy
replied, "Because I thought that in order to save
her
you would have to take all of my blood!" The doctor
didnt know what to say! Then he asked, "But if you
thought that you were going to die, why did you
offer
to give her your blood?" With tears streaming down
his face, he said, "Because she was my friend and
I
loved her!"