Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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road Street Invasion Story and Photos by J. Acuna It's peaceful here now. The waves again lap on the dusky beaches of this island on North Broad Street. The pigeons are back waiting for the handouts of the occasional tourist or the wandering medical student. Yes, even the medical students have returned. The class of '86 can be seen arriving for its first taste of clinical life. Sometimes, they pause among the debris of war and reflect on the events of the preceding weeks, as if considering whether they were lucky to have been away or sorry to have missed the excitement of the invasion. Sure, it's peaceful now. but the occasional sight of a soldier on patrol still serves as a reminder of the turmoil. And the few remaining senior students are constantly surrounded by the underclassmen, those who missed the action but hope for a glimpse of what it was like. They long to hear of that morning when the tension of events was snapped like one of Dr. Troyer's balloons blown up to the bursting point. This story is what we've been able to piece together about the strange sequence of events that took place here, not long ago .... As all else, it began with politics. There was a push for power by the department of Medicine, led by Sol “Sunny Sherry. Though he'd long been a moderate, it is believed that his shift to the left was inspired by his right-hand man. an inflammatory character known as “The Arm”. Intelligence sources reveal that the Arm had close ties with the nearby island of Buba and that Buban assistance turned the power struggle on the island into a vicious coup that prompted the invasion. Sunny's ambitions to dominate the island began to take shape with the construction of a multi-million dollar airfield. Ostensibly built as a Medivac heliport, it had the capacity to handle huge military cargo planes. The Arm would dismiss its huge size to questioners with. “So what? We get a lot of casualties here on a Saturday night. OK? The nearby islands of Hahnemann. Jeff, PennMed and the tiny republic of MCP all looked with dread toward this project. Their fear was heightened when reports started to flow in of large numbers of Buban “workers on the TUMS island. When Buban ships arrived loaded with cargo suspected to be missiles, panic struck. Collectively, the surrounding islands appealed to the US armed forces to put an end to the runaway expansion. But it was too late.

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PHILADELPHIA AND BEYOND cWofld 6 JH

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The coup started with the kidnapping of the titular head of the island. Papa Doc Henikoff. who was taken to a secret destination west of the Mississippi. Sunny” rapidly assumed control of Henikoff’s office and ordered missile testing to begin from the airfield. Realizing this would draw immediate action by the Marines, he ordered the senior class held under house arrest while in their last sessions of Systems II. so that the Marine'scounterattack would have to be conservative. Intelligence photograph of missile firing test. Devastation after a direct hit by a New England Journal bombshell. Rebel gunner takes aim as Marine parachutes descend on the island. Kidnapping of Papa Doc Henikoff Luckily, as ever, few students were there, the majority of the class having been alerted to the impending danger by a trusted scribe. By promising full coverage of the salient points of all lectures and by assuring all that the course was strictly Pass Fail, this brave individual successfully relocated most seniors to safer shores in South Jersey. But the few students who were held captive rapidly became the focus of the local media and their welfare the excuse for US military intervention. Following a stirring speech by Brigadier General Walter H. Smedley who said. We've got to get those boys and girls out of there. Already they've been exposed to the same Urology lecture sixteen times and we don't know how much more they can take of that kind of torture. There may already be permanent damage ... . The storming of North Broad Street began. As Navy warships pelted the island with articles from the New England Journal, in effort to cause general confusion, the Marines hit the beaches. This clockwork precision paid off twofold by taking the majority of Buban workers by surprise so that they gave up with little resistance, and by providing the captive students with free copies of several recent reports of advances being made in AIDS research. One final, desperate stand was made by the Arm and a few rebel holdouts at the fortified High-Rise Garage. The Siege of the High-Rise , as it became known locally, lasted two long days. In the end, the rebels surrendered to the Marines. Apparently, the Arm broke under the tension and had driven his own men to distraction by forcing them to listen to an impromptu lecture on septic arthritis delivered over the garage PA system. Grossed out by the mental image of gram negative arthritis, the weary rebels had turned on their leader, bound and gagged him, and delivered him to the Marines. And so it ended. 8