Dr. Wassner is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves and commanded the 909th Forward Surgical Team during its nine-month deployment to eastern Afghanistan, September 2002 to May 2003. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Today, he is a trauma and acute care surgeon in Santa Fe, N.M.

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The height of the Vietnam War coincided with college and medical school for me. I only vaguely remember the antiwar protests at The University of Iowa, since my nose was pressed hard to the grindstone during medical school. It all happened on the other side of the Iowa River and we read or heard about it as we attended classes or made rounds in the hospital.

A number of my classmates had signed up for the "Berry plan," which deferred a call-up to the draft, in order to complete residency. The payback for that deferment was, of course, a term of service in the military. My father had spent WWII throughout Europe, and was one of the soldiers who liberated the concentration camp, Dachau. When I asked his advice, he told me not to volunteer. If the Army needed me, it would find me. Those words were echoed by the program director at my surgical residency, himself a veteran of the war in the Pacific. Well.OK, then, I thought to myself.

How puzzled my father must have been, when, 10 years on, I joined the Army! My surgical career, in a rural area of Illinois, and my Army career did not have much in common until 1998 when I took command of a Reserve Forward Surgical Team stationed at Ft. Sheridan, near Chicago. Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

Within a year, in the middle of the night, on my 55th birthday, my team and I stepped off the cavernous C-17 transport aircraft into the cold air of Afghanistan. Within a week, we were hard by the border with Pakistan, tucked in tents inside a compound built on an old German experimental farm, receiving casualties from Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Forward Surgical Team, successor to the Korean War-era MASH, is a 20-soldier unit with the capability to resuscitate, stabilize, and prepare casualties for transport. We all knew just what to do, but never knew what to expect. We saw land mine injuries, gunshot wounds, the worst were little girls injured by landmines while caring for their goats. Despite the large numbers of Afghani men and children we saw, we never saw a single adult woman, in almost 10 months.

Of course, wounded American soldiers got excellent care, and were evacuated rapidly. However, we couldn't evacuate the local people, either soldiers or civilians. Once stabilized, their families had to care for them, if they were not too badly injured. For further care they had to rely on the local hospitals, two of which I had the opportunity to visit. Today, when I find myself ready to complain about a shortcoming in the hospitals where I practice, I think back to the spartan facilities in that cold, dusty country and I am thankful I am in America.

Although my military career is now coming to a close, I am still doing surgery, still enjoying it. After 25 years in a private practice, I recently left Illinois for a position as a hospital-based trauma & acute-care surgeon in New Mexico. Eerily, the terrain reminds me of eastern Afghanistan!

How did my experience in Operation Enduring Freedom change me? I am proud to have served my country, as did my father and uncles. The suffering we saw still saddens me and I wonder what has become of the Afghanis whose lives my team touched. God alone knows how things will turn out in the turmoil in Southwest Asia, but I do believe that the surgical care we gave to our American and Afghani patients made a difference.