A Healing Blessing Saves a Dying Soldier

 “One day I was relaxing in my office and Winnie, my secretary, said, "General MacArthur's office is on the phone!" So I picked up the phone and I said, "This is Breillatt speaking." And I don't remember his name - but he was a Lt Commander in Tokyo [same rank as Grandpa at the time] and he said, "Joe, General MacArthur wants to see you." I said, "What does he want to see me for?" And he said, "He'll tell you when he sees you. How about 10 hundred tomorrow? " I replied, "I'll be there." So I went down there to my office in Tokyo and joined this Lt Commander to visit MacArthur's office. We walked in and this General, MacArthur's Chief of Staff greeted me profusely and I thought, "Boy, this doesn't sound good to me. Something is wrong here." I was then ushered into MacArthur's office. He was sitting at his desk in his shirt sleeves. He got up and came around and took me by both his hands and shook my hand and he said, "Good to have you here with us Commander." I said, "Yes Sir." All I could say was Yes Sir, Yes Sir with 5 stars staring at me. Then he told me what he wanted. He wanted me to take over as the United Nations Liaison Officer with headquarters on the Danish Hospital Ship Jutlandia for duty in the Korean area all in addition to my other duties.
"So I said, 'I'll need help.' He said, 'You'll get the help you need.' Well this was General MacArthur, I was with him for about 5 minutes and then you had to get out. He told me that I came highly recommended by Admiral Joy [Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy, Commander Naval Forces, Far East for the first 2 years of the Korean War]....They told me what the job was going to be: it was coordinating the removal of wounded from Korea to Japan and it was all by ship, not by air. We had 4 transports that were constantly going back and forth." While I was there in Korea these 19 patients were lying there waiting for transport by helicopters back to the hospital [ship] - they were all wounded. I got all their names, serial numbers, where they were from, etc. We were right on the firing line. The General said, 'Come on, let's get out of here!" The North Koreans and Chinese were firing at us and I was scared to death. All I wanted to do was get the heck out of there. I was finished there myself. Colonel Pier had taken care of his work and another Colonel had responsibility for personnel and ammunition and so forth while I took care of the wounded.  We were getting into the helicopter and this Army medic came up and said, "Hey Doc, a Mormon guy there wants to have the last rites of the church." I said, "Oh no!" I didn't run across any Mormons, they were all Protestants, Catholics or Jews. The General said, "Go ahead Doc and take care of him, we'll wait for you." I said, "I sure hope you'll wait" - we had just had 4 shells come over, beyond us thank goodness they didn't land near us. So I went back and this guy was laying there and I knelt down by the side of him. He had this hole in his chest. He must have had a dozen kotex [sterile pads] piled in there to stop the bleeding, to close up the wound. You could throw your hat into that hole he had in him. Blood all over. He couldn't live. There wasn't a chance in the world of that guy living. Why was I going to waste my time there. But I had the Holy Priesthood and I had a job to do. 
So I got down on my knees and said, "The book says in anointing and administering to the sick that two members of the Melchizedek Priesthood will do this and that." There was only one member of the Melchizedek Priesthood there, Me. So I said, "Do any of you people know a Mormon around here?" Nobody knew of a Mormon. 
Then this Catholic Priest was standing there, named Jimmy O'Connor and he said, "Can I help you, Doc?" I said, "Jimmy, take this bottle and pour a little oil on this guy's head and use these words: I anoint your head with this holy oil that has been consecrated and dedicated in the household of faith for the healing  of the sick ,and this I do in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
And he did - I didn't have him say anything about the Melchizedek Priesthood. So then we both laid our hands on his head and I gave him a blessing. All that time I was giving the blessing I wasn't thinking of blessing him. 
This has bothered me all these years. I told President Hinckley this when he was a visitor at our place. He said, "Don't you know the Lord knows just what you are thinking before you think it?" 
Well, I gave him a blessing - and all I could say was "according to your faith this will happen." [Implying he offered what he considered a rote blessing of healing - the kind of words a dying man might be comforted by]. He couldn't get well. There wasn't a chance - he wouldn't make it to the hospital. They would be taking a dead man down there.
So we got back to the helicopter and we flew off. We went to two or three other places where the troops needed us. Then we went to Seoul. We finished our business in Seoul and the General was going somewhere so I asked if it was OK if I catch a plane to Pusan? "On your way, Doc, thanks coming with us.." I said, "OK, thank you General." I went down to the airport and got a plane headed for Pusan. I got back there and returned to the Danish Hospital ship and asked Ingritene Andersen - she was the secretary to the Commodore. "Here is a name, will you tell me if they brought him in or not?" She came back and told me, "He's in the 3rd deck in bed 8. 
I said, "WHAAAT???!" She replied, "You asked me." She handed me a piece of paper with it written there: 3rd deck, bed 8.
So I went down below and looked at this guy. He was bandaged from his neck to his hips. I found out later he had been in surgery for 4 hours. This young fellow looked up at me , waved at me and said, "Hi Doc, I made it!"
I started to cry. I still feel emotional about that because he shouldn't have been there. He should have been in a hole in the ground somewhere."

-Lieutenant Commander Julian Breillatt, as told to his grandson, Alain