Doctors at War: Life and Death in a Field Hospital

by Mark de Rond

Doctors at War is a candid account of a trauma surgical team based, for a tour of duty, at a field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan. Mark de Rond tells of the highs and lows of surgical life in hard-hitting detail, bringing to life a morally ambiguous world in which good people face impossible choices and in which routines designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of highlighting war's absurdity. With stories that are at once comical and tragic, de Rond captures the surreal experience of being a doctor at war. He lifts the cover on a world rarely ever seen, let alone written about, and provides a poignant counterpoint to the archetypical, adrenaline-packed, macho tale of what it is like to go to war.Here the crude and visceral coexist with the tender and affectionate. The author tells of well-meaning soldiers at hospital reception, there to deliver a pair of legs in the belief that these can be reattached to their comrade, now in mid-surgery; of midsummer Christmas parties and pancake breakfasts and late-night sauna sessions; of interpersonal rivalries and banter; of caring too little or too much; of tenderness and compassion fatigue; of hell and redemption; of heroism and of playing God. While many good firsthand accounts of war by frontline soldiers exist, this is one of the first books ever to bring to life the experience of the surgical teams tasked with mending what war destroys.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2017

Reviews

[DW · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing makes the book easy to read; the subject matter makes it difficult to read. The description of some of the injuries are stomach-turning and upsetting. Unfortunately, the rest of it is kind of flabby. There's little to no context or background on why these medical personnel chose to work for the military, there's a lot of repetition, and we never really get to know any of the "characters" well. It feels like it would have been better off as an article or two rather than a book.

I got a free copy from NetGalley.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, in spite of the fascinating and frequently searing subject matter, I found myself increasingly irritated by this book due to the way it is written. I imagine the author wanted to convey the perilous and chancy, indeed often absurd, nature of being in a war zone by his disconnected, repetitive and fragmented narration, but for me it just didn’t work. Nor was there was much insight into what made these surgeons and medical personnel tick. They are described from the outside with no real effort to get inside their heads. We don’t even learn why they have chosen to be there or what they have learnt from their experiences. The author spent 6 weeks observing the trauma surgical team at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, and admittedly the descriptions are vivid and evocative. The highs and lows, the frantic activity alternating with periods of boredom, the moral and ethical choices that have to be made, all this is well described. But it seemed to me to be all surface with little substance and what could have been a truly memorable account of medicine on the front line failed to engage me.

[Kyle Wendy Skultety (gimmethatbook.com) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my blog at www.gimmethatbook.com.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this review copy!

The author starts out by saying that this book was never supposed to be published, due to the subject matter and the way it was perceived to be handled. That only added more intrigue to the story, to me, and I was eager to begin reading.

The story is akin to the book/TV series MASH, with beleaguered surgeons, war all around them, stress, and dark ways to relieve the boredom. There is a great deal of loss of life complicated by military rules and the Hippocratic Oath – beware, as the injuries are horrific and discussed in great detail.

The author is British; so I expected his writing style to be a bit different from American writers. In fact, I even welcomed it, as I look forward to non-American cadences and dialects in books. What I hadn’t bargained for was uneven writing with obscure phrasing. At times it’s hard to understand who is saying what, and there was no deep insight made on the choices the doctors had to make. At the 75% mark I realized I had not really absorbed anything meaningful except that war is hell, these surgeons were doing the best they could, and sometimes there was strangeness (the usual black humor and Christmas in July) to help the soldier’s mental states. The same type of story was repeated over and over again (wounded too badly, euthanized with pain meds/crashing boredom dealt with by playing card games and trying to stay cool in the desert/occasional platitude about life) without variance or emotion.

Somehow this writer managed to make a wartime hospital seem dull. The characters are an amalgam, and so perhaps could not have been made more detailed; but I think it would have been better if he had given a little more detail about why they were doctors, what made this tour of duty different from others, etc.

It’s a shame that such an important subject matter was reduced to an unsatisfying bite of pablum, as there is a need to understand what the military deals with during extended conflicts. Heart of Darkness, Catch-22, and On Call In Hell expressed the story in a more readable and gratifying way. I gave up at the abovementioned 75% mark; something I don’t do often, but I just didn’t want to waste any more time. Great subject – bad handling.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book received from NetGalley.

This was a book I couldn't put down, I read it straight through. It was written by an ethnographer who was sent to Helmand Provance to see what life was like for the medics stationed there. It was never definitively stated if he was there to work or to observe. The book pulls no punches, it's extremely grim especially since they are also treating the locals, including children, who are caught up in the fighting. Much of it reminded me of M.A.S.H. the movie/book, not the TV show. There are some funny moments and there is quite a bit of "graveyard" humor in its pages. I enjoyed reading about these doctors who treat our soldiers without much of the extras found in the hospitals back home.

[Tim Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doctors at War is a very interesting account of field hospital surgeons' lives during the war in Afghanistan. Bits of history and context are sprinkled in between de Rond's candid storytelling. It can be repetitive, as you can imagine their lives are continuous repetitions of trauma surgery and waiting around would be, but you slowly begin to see the purpose of the book. Doctors at War essentially adds detail and color to the idea of providing medical care in a war zone and provides perspective to the military machine and war itself.

[Rosie Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, and read it over 2 days. I thought the balance between fact/technical language and easy to read narrative was just right, so I learnt a lot from this book without finding it taxing to read. Very thought provoking! I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in finding out about life for the medics at Camp Bastion.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful and honest, a really interesting read into what things were like for the doctors working in Bastion

[Lilli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awful

[Susan Jarboe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I agree with Frank Ledwidge’s review a “brutally honest…with its tired, funny, sometimes cynical…dedicated medics.” Think of MASH except the war theatre is Afghanistan not Korea.

[Sarah Kate Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advance review copy of Doctors at War from Netgalley. Written by a war surgeon using his original field notes, the author takes real life people, gives them new names for privacy reasons, and tells us the story of what it's like to be in a war. This is real war, not the kind that's depicted in movies. It's nonfiction medical but reads like a fiction thriller.
It brings the experiences of doctors who are at war to the general public. This book is one of a kind.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great account of what happens in a military hospital in Afghanistan. Based on the author's field notes from his 6 week deployment, the civilian doctor gives a very detailed tour of Camp Bastion.