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Citizen-Surgeon cover art

Citizen-Surgeon

By: Paul Bryan Roach
Narrated by: Paul Bryan Roach, Emmett Schrader
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Summary

Citizen-Surgeon takes listeners into the otherwise inaccessible, remote, and intense world of life and surgery within a combat zone. In the backdrop of the US-led war in Afghanistan, amid a defining US Marine Corps’ offensive to conquer the Marjah region of Helmand Province, [then] US Navy Commander Paul Roach and his company-mates assemble and congeal as a medical unit in Southern California, transport from the United States to their tents in Dasht-e-Margo (the “Desert of Death”) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and professionally execute their role as one of the few medical and surgical companies supporting this major offensive. 

In the course of the book’s events, the author undergoes a transformation from being a physician in a military uniform into a military officer that happens to be a physician. The crucible effecting this change is the military offensive and his role within it. Shocking and intense, an array of critical injuries and their treatments are described in rich language that anyone, medical or nonmedical alike, can absorb. Death also pervades the atmosphere; intrusive, unyielding, and painful, its battlefield familiarity and personal impact is resisted, suffered, and ultimately, accepted. 

Citizen-Surgeon is an intimate portrayal; a chronicle; a celebration of friendship, love, success, and failure; contemporary war; and military medicine. It is an account of a slice of reality that few people are privileged to know. It reflects deeply upon the nature of personal choice and how that choice puts us where we are in life, even if we did not fully see in advance how the choice would change us. Citizen-Surgeon also explores a variant of post-traumatic stress particular to medical assets, and it reveals one man’s chess match against it. It is a must-listen for those with a specific interest in contemporary military medicine, and for those with broader, essentially human interests in individual growth, adventure, and self-actualization.

©2016 Paul Bryan Roach (P)2021 Rogues Gallery, LLC

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It was ok

There are better memoirs from surgeons at war. Having said that, it was ‘okay’ a bit long winded, waffley and jumps around all over the place

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Fantastic

A ‘true’ and ‘real’ personal account without false dramatics. Brilliant read and read clear and well. Presented at a good level for a doctor like myself but also explains well for the layman. Inspiring.

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Ironical in the extreme now

A clear painful and tragic firsthand account which describes in detail the paradoxical situations of doctors trying to save the lives of Americans,Afghans civilians,services personnel and most tragically of all innocent children; and members of the Taliban few of them grateful but many who would kill the medical staff with their last functional limb given the slightest opportunity . Considering the situation in that country now the feelings it can arouse can be unbearable so beware if

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