"Better to Win a Heart...

...than to pierce it."

Which of these youths is more likely to become a suicide bomber?

Iraqi boy stares at the rubble of his former home after an American strike.

Indonesian child greets U.S. Navy helicopter flying in water and supplies after the 2004 tsunami.

Sometimes, we have to blow things up, and people get hurt -- even innocent people. Then our military medical forces try to put them back together, no matter for which side they fought, or from where they came.

Medical personnel assess an Afghan man on Forward Operating Base Farah,
Afghanistan, Dec. 26, 2012. The soldiers are assigned to the 541st Forward
Surgical Team. (DOD Photo)

U.S. Navy Lt. j.g. Laura Cook performs an ultrasound on a wounded Afghan
policeman to determine the presence of internal injuries on Forward
Operating Base Farah in Afghanistan's Farah province, Dec, 31, 2012. Cook is
a physician assistant for Provincial Reconstruction Team Farah. Medical
personnel assigned to the team, the 541st Forward Surgical Team and
coalition medics treated four members of the Afghan National Police injured
by improvised explosive devices. (DOD Photo)

In ten years of supporting combat forces in the Middle East, military medicine has achieved unprecedented success in saving lives. The reason: Bring world class medical resources and rapid evacuation as close as possible to the point of injury. The result: If you are wounded in action and arrive with a pulse at a forward surgical resuscitation site, your odds of survival are 98% -- unheard of in any other conflict since the world and its wars began.

What if we never had to use that world class capability to patch up victims of warfare? What if we could deploy our medical forces to win the hearts of minds of people before they become our enemies?

We've been doing that too, all around the globe, all military services, all operational platforms. Much of that effort has concentrated on the Western Pacific, a volatile area that our national leadership has designated as the next focus of national defense attention.

Military medicine has been there for decades, extending the hand of peace to a diverse range of people and places -- most notably our response to natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami that impacted Indonesia, and the recent triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear power meltdown) that affected our friends in Japan.

Personnel from the Air Force HARRT (Humanitarian Assistance Rapid Response Team) unloads supplies in relief for the 2009 Indonesian earthquake disaster

Less than a day after they flew into the disaster zone, the Air Force medics were fully operational and treating victims of the disaster

Every year the U.S. Navy deploys one of it's hospital ships on a humanitarian assistance mission, alternating between the Western Pacific and the Caribbean/South America. Staffed with medical expertise from all services, international military medical partners, and non-governmental volunteers, these missions bring world class medical care to people whose lives have not been as fortunate as ours. More important, they bring caring and friendship that endures long after the ship sails away to its next port.

USNS MERCY sails near Southeast Asia in Operation Pacific Partnership

As we begin a new year, the conflicts in the Middle East move into their second decade. Let us earnestly hope and pray that we will begin to see the end of wars, and the emergence of world peace -- and, all around the globe, the faces of happy children.

 -- With thanks to my good friends and colleagues: Bob Kiser, who provided some of these photos; and Doug Anderson, who coined the phrase, "Better to win a heart than to pierce it."

Our Tank

This is an Abrams tank:

This is a United States Marine:

This is what an Abrams tank can do to an automobile:

Imagine what an Abrams tank could do to a Marine. Gruesome, eh? But maybe you don't know Marines like we did in Navy Medicine. Maybe you never met our Tank.


Tank arrived at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD in the very first wave of injured Marines from Operation Iraqi Freedom in the spring of 2003. Tank was not his real name, but it's how we came to know him, and how we introduced him to the Commander-in-Chief when he visited his wounded Marines. Among the early American heroes from that conflict, Tank epitomized the toughness and resiliency of the men who had gone into harm's way.

We named our poster Marine  after the U.S. combat vehicle that caused his injury. During a short break from sustained operations, Tank dozed against a mound of warm Iraqi sand. By design, his desert camouflage uniform blended into the terrain. The driver of the maneuvering vehicle never saw his comrade in arms. As one track of the Abrams ran over Tank's body at pelvic level, the sand absorbed enough of the crush that he sustained only reparable injuries, a fractured pelvis and ruptured bowel.

Thanks to emergency surgery on the battlefield and in forward deployed hospitals, Tank survived the initial trauma. Just a few days after the mishap, he arrived at Bethesda with a repaired bowel and temporary colostomy, bedridden from the fractured pelvis.  Physically and emotionally, he remained in combat. 

This indomitable Marine did not wallow in his rack. He soon overcame the restriction to bed, got up on crutches, and made daily rounds on the ward where about 30 wounded Marines recovered from a variety of injuries. "Oo-rah, Marine," he would say. "Look at me. If I can survive, and walk, so can you!"

In the nearly ten years since Tank returned from the battlefield, thousands of Marines and soldiers did survive their wounds, and got on with their post-traumatic lives -- attacking their disabilities with the same spirit as they did the enemy at arms. 

Military medicine rightly touts the advanced trauma care and sophisticated technology that have resulted in the best survival rates of any modern war. In truth, those are just adjuncts to the primary healing force we saw on that ward: Tank and other Marines who refused to quit, refused to consider themselves disabled, and rallied each other to health.

I recall another recovering young Marine's immediate response when asked where he wanted to go for convalescent leave upon discharge from acute care in the late spring of 2003:

"Bagdad!"

Semper Fi, Marines!