Have you ever wondered how the medical personnel who care for our nation’s “wounded warriors” feel? What goes through their minds? How do their encounters with these brave wounded combatants affect them, sometimes for the rest of their lives? How do they cope with the visual realities of caring for those who defend us and are willing to sacrifice everything doing it?
The One I’ll Always Remember is an emotional and compelling compilation of real-life, sometimes surreal, recollections of medical personnel who have provided care to America’s wounded warriors during military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a handful of stories from other hot zones, such as Somalia, Berlin, and Liberia. Some of the most poignant stories are from the home front.
This book includes the remembrances of medical personnel writing about “The One” patient who has had a dramatic impact on them, consequently revealing the human side of those caregivers, and the array of emotions they experience. One of the physician assistants who contributed to this book wrote about an Iraqi girl injured by a suicide bomber at a family wedding. A night nurse recalled prepping the body of a deceased soldier, talking with him through the night. These are just two of the many stories recounted in The One.
US Army photojournalist, video-cameraman, newspaper editor, and veteran Gary Bloomfield is an award-winning, widely published author and editor of multiple books and magazine articles, not to mention photographic coverage of worldwide military events. He has served for more than ten years in the Army and another fourteen as an Army public affairs chief, documenting the conflicts, successes, and casualties of war. Of note is his book Duty, Honor, Victory: America’s Athletes in World War II (Lyons Press), which won the Benjamin Franklin Award. While serving on the Korean DMZ in 1976, Gary was named Army Journalist of the Year. These are only a few of his accolades in military photojournalism. Bloom-field continues to pursue and validate accurate, real-life documentation of America’s wars, her sacrificial warfighters, and her military caregivers . . . giving credit where credit is due.
Being asked to write the foreword of Gary Bloomfield’s latest book was not only an honor for me, it was a requirement he demanded for the validity of the project. Gary wanted a medical care provider who had been personally involved in caring for our country’s military men and women to write the foreword. “I want this book to pay tribute to both our military and nonmilitary medical personnel and the wounded warriors they care for,” he said. “Those who have cared for our nation’s wounded warriors or other victims of our conflicts, whether it’s on the battlefield, at a field hospital, on a medevac flight, on a warship, or stateside in a military hospital or a VA facility. The book has more credibility by relying on those who are in the thick of it on a daily basis, who know better than anyone else the efforts they go to every day to do what they do.”
I felt I could not contribute to the documented memories recorded in this book. I had a difficult time trying to isolate “The One” out of the many veterans I have cared for in my life as a nurse. To me, they all were memorable. Consequently, Gary Bloomfield asked me to consider writing the foreword.
Having served in a US Air Force security police squadron during the early 1970s Vietnam conflict, I have some military experience. I have been a registered nurse for over twenty-five years, during which time I provided multifaceted, specialized care for America’s servicemen and women in areas such as pre-hospital treatment and transport, emergency departments, critical care and burn units, interventional radiology, surgery, and post-anesthesia care units. It has been and continues to be a privilege, and debt, for me to deliver the finest medical care to our nation’s wounded warriors, who are numbered among the most honorable, dedicated heroes one could ever expect to meet.
Medically and surgically “salvaging” my military brothers and sisters has been an emotional rollercoaster. After a duty shift, I have wept bitter tears in those moments alone, knowing there will be more dedicated young men and women who literally will “give their all” . . . their freedom . . . to keep America, her children, and her allies free from tyranny. Compounding these heart-wrenching events, we also think of the heroes at home—the spouse who has to take up the slack due to their mate’s absence, the concerned mate daily dreading that possible “notification visit” from their spouse’s commander . . . that “line of duty death.”
We have further shared the same thoughts in the break-rooms . . . that these mostly young brave men and women have willingly sacrificed what most Americans take for granted . . . a life to be lived, with hopes and dreams and plans for the future. Most of our warfighters considered the price of freedom to be worth the cost of death or dismemberment, in order that their country and their families could be safe to have a future, and enjoy the things other Americans enjoy. Their bravery and sacrifice is one of the primary driving forces behind the high-quality, professional, competent care we medical personnel strive to deliver.
In reading these accounts it is vital to understand the basic working environment of military medical personnel. Stateside and foreign-soil fixed-base medical operations care usually occur in one specific treatment area such as an operating suite or a medical-surgical unit. Then the patient is transferred to another area, where a different provider takes over.
In combat theaters, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, medical care can be most commonly referred to as “continuative,” meaning once the combat medic delivers the wounded warrior to the forward-operating base field hospital, the medic may, based upon the mission situation and their provider level-of-care, continue providing life-sustaining care for their patient by following their patient from the trauma/operating room to the post-anesthesia area, then to the holding area.
It may be necessary to just surgically stabilize the warfighter and air-evac him or her to the nearest fixed-base hospital, which leads us to the next phase, the treatment arena in the air. In aeromedical evacuations caregivers must follow different principles of treatment depending on air-pressure gradients (whether the aircraft is pressurized or not). These conditions can instigate a more significant stress-load on both the caregiver and patient, especially during an extended flight that might take hours.
The One I’ll Always Remember puts you on the front lines and in the operating room as you read and experience these stories alongside the military care providers. You will feel the emotional and psychological trauma of extended combat surgeries, and learn about coping skills, such as avoiding knowing a patient’s name or too much personal information. More than 95 percent of all the wounded warriors who come to the field hospitals leave the facilities alive, yet it’s those few who don’t make it who haunt medical personnel for years, sometimes forever. They bear the guilt of not being able to save everyone, asking if possibly they could have done more. They may not know their patients’ names, but they see their faces in haunting memories, even decades later.
—Larry Mahana, RN