In a minute

Note: This post was written by guest blogger Sra. Bibliotecaria.

Almost exactly a year ago, Maj. Andy Olmsted died in Iraq.

I thought of Andy again when I heard that trauma surgeon John Pryor had been killed in Iraq on Christmas Day. Beyond the devastating loss to his loved ones, our world is poorer for having lost his passionate honesty. Indeed, the first I ever heard of him was through his 2007 op-ed about parallels between his work overseas and at home:

In Iraq, ironically, I found myself drawing on my experience as a civilian trauma surgeon each time [mass casualties] would overrun the combat hospital. As nine or 10 patients from a firefight rolled in, I sometimes caught myself saying “just like another Friday night in West Philadelphia.”

The wounds and nationalities of the patients are different, but the feelings of helplessness, despair and loss are the same. In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies. Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one.

More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq. There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa. Unlike the Iraq conflict, this war is not on the front pages of The Post or on CNN.

Pryor was in a better position than most of us both to see this bloody misery firsthand and to bear witness to it. It would have been enough that he used his hands to heal; that he also used his voice to advocate was an act of profound generosity.

It takes titantic self-confidence to cut into human flesh, even to heal. I don’t know what it was like to live with Dr. Pryor or even have him as a colleague. I do know that the obituary was shocking to me, though as the song says we should know how fast the world can change:

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody’s going to jail
If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

Back to Andy Olmsted, and his farewell message:

[F]or those who knew me and feel this pain, I think it’s a good thing to realize that this pain has been felt by thousands and thousands (probably millions, actually) of other people all over the world. That is part of the cost of war, any war, no matter how justified. If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision.

posted by Sra. Bibliotecaria ⋅ tagged Philadelphia, war, youth

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