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thedrifter
11-08-07, 05:51 AM
Soldier's memoir shows emotional toll of Iraq war

Kathy Briccetti

Thursday, November 8, 2007
Rule Number Two
Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital
By Heidi Squier Kraft, Ph.D.
LITTLE, BROWN; 243 PAGES; $23.99

The television show "MASH" offered us two rules of war. Rule No. 1 is that young men die. Rule No. 2 is that doctors can't change rule No. 1. Practicing in a Florida Naval hospital in 2004, clinical psychologist Heidi Squier Kraft is called up when her twin son and daughter are 15 months old. Leaving them at home with her husband, a former Marine pilot, and her parents, she joins Alpha Surgical Company for an eight-month deployment at a field hospital in Al Asad, Iraq.

The memoir's emotionally evocative moments emerge when Kraft describes relationships, both severed and formed by war. She includes a few short chapters labeled "HOME" that effectively add contrast and remind the reader what Kraft has left behind. Her father's e-mails with reports of her children's days are particularly touching. The bonds between Marines, witnessed by Kraft, also provide stirring reading. When a sergeant loses an eye in an explosion, he asks for help sitting up on a gurney so he can count his men. "He sighed with a smile, and gingerly lowered himself back on the cot. 'Thanks, Doc,' he said, closing his eye. 'I only have one good eye, but I can see that my Marines are okay.' "

Initially interesting, but ultimately disappointing, Kraft's account lacks the gritty, unflinching writing of other war memoirs. Not as detailed, nor as carefully crafted, as Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead," for example, her story includes scorpions, sand flies, vampire bats, sandstorms and summer temperatures in the low 130s; however, she steers clear of drugs, sex and politics. She only hints at the frightening lack of preparedness of the medical team for a combat arena (they are issued 9mm pistols after eight days of training) and mentions only in passing one or two bureaucratic snafus. She eschews the profanity that would have added realism, and, sprinkled with references to God, her chronicle is comparatively wholesome.

Although Kraft is a good storyteller, the narration often has a distanced feel to it, as if told by a bystander. Her ambivalence about leaving her children to fulfill her commitment is her unique angle, but this aspect is treated superficially and feels too easily resolved. "I could not be a combat psychologist and a mother at the same time. I had to be one or the other. I had no choice. I put their pictures away."

Although we learn that Kraft's father served in the Navy, we never understand why Kraft joined, why she chose the practice of psychology, or what her training as a flight psychologist entailed. We don't learn what makes this narrator tick, what makes her truly interesting. And not until midway through the book do we get to see Kraft at work. Before this, she is shown holding the hands of critically injured soldiers, doing paperwork after her shift and listening to her colleagues' operating room stories. In places where Kraft could have added her clinical experience to enhance the story - when a young soldier is sent home with symptoms of severe bipolar disorder, for example - she resorts to less-engaging summary.

When she does show herself in action, co-leading therapy groups for traumatized Marine units, training soldiers in relaxation exercises, and - ironically - teaching smoking cessation, the story builds interest again. And when she admits to feeling like a novice in situations out of her clinical experience, the reader empathizes, and Kraft becomes a more sympathetic character and reliable narrator. While she admits the futility of her job, she doesn't embellish that realization. Also lacking is her analysis of the effectiveness of the therapy she and her colleagues are providing. She lists similarities between medical treatment in the current war and previous ones, but doesn't do the same for psychological treatment, nor does she shed much light on combat stress, survivor's guilt, or other aspects of the relatively new field of combat psychology. Finally, after eight months apart from her toddlers, her reunion with them is reduced to one, unsatisfying sentence.

To her credit, Kraft does not wave the stars and stripes in readers' faces to defend or justify the war. But she doesn't adequately convey her reasons for serving, other than feeling duty-bound and patriotic. Her eventual decision to leave active service adds to the unexplored ambivalence.

Kraft would alter the "MASH" rules slightly for today's war. "Rule number one might now state that war damages people. Rule number two, of course, would be unchanged." And she would add another rule. "War damages doctors, too. They are damaged by rule number two." Kraft's honesty is admirable, in particular her admission of the emotional numbing caused by her experiences, as well as her difficulty rejoining a stateside psychology practice. Unfortunately the reader, too, is left with a blunting of emotion and too many questions unanswered.

Kathy Briccetti has a doctorate in clinical psychology and a master's of fine arts in creative writing. She is at work on a memoir about three generations of absent fathers and adoption in her family.

Ellie