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Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq
Simon & Schuster
May 2010
On Sale: April 27, 2010
304 pages
ISBN: 1416599576
EAN: 9781416599579
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
IN 2004, AT THE AGE OF FORTY-EIGHT, DR. DAVE HNIDA,
a family physician from Littleton, Colorado, volunteered to
be deployed to Iraq and spent a tour of duty as a battalion
surgeon with a combat unit. In 2007, he went back—this time
as a trauma chief at one of the busiest Combat Support
Hospitals (CSH) during the Surge. In an environment that was
nothing less than a modern-day M*A*S*H, the doctors’ main
objective was simple: Get ’em in, get ’em out. The only CSH
staffed by reservists— who tended to be older,
more-experienced doctors disdainful of authority—the 399th
soon became a medevac destination of choice because of its
high survival rate, an astounding 98 percent. This was
fast-food medicine at its best: working in a series of tents
connected to the occasional run-down building, Dr. Hnida and
his fellow doctors raced to keep the wounded alive until
they could be airlifted out of Iraq for more extensive
repairs. Here the Hippocratic Oath superseded that of the
pledge to Uncle Sam; if you got the red-carpet helicopter
ride, his team took care of you, no questions asked. On one
stretcher there might be a critically injured American
soldier while three feet away lay the insurgent, shot in the
head, who planted the IED that inflicted those wounds.
But there was levity amid the chaos. On call
round-the-clock with an unrelenting caseload, the doctors’
prescription for sanity included jokes, pranks, and
misbehavior. Dr. Hnida’s deployment was filled with colorful
characters and gifted surgeons, a diverse group who became
trusted friends as together they dealt with the
psychological toll of seeing the casualties of war
firsthand. In a conflict with no easy answers
and even less good news, Paradise General gives us
something that we can all believe in—the story of an
ordinary citizen turned volunteer soldier trying to make a
difference. With honesty and candor, and an off-the-wall,
self-deprecating humor that sustained him and his battle
buddies through their darkest hours, Dr. Hnida delivers a
devastating and inspiring account of his CSH tour and an
unparalleled look at medical care during an unscripted war.
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