Healers in War: Honoring the Battlefield Surgeons of Memorial Day By Linda Dabo

 

Healers in War: Honoring the Battlefield Surgeons of Memorial Day

By Linda Dabo 

Each year on Memorial Day, Americans gather to honor the men and women who gave their lives in service to the country. We visit cemeteries, attend parades, and offer tributes to fallen heroes who fought for freedom. But among the uniforms and sacrifice, there is a quieter story—a story of those who did not go to war to take life, but to save it.

These are the battlefield surgeons.

Often working under fire, in makeshift tents or crowded field hospitals, combat surgeons are the guardians of life in places where death is a constant presence. They operate under immense pressure, limited resources, and in environments far removed from the calm sterility of civilian hospitals. They are witness to the worst of war—and the best of human resilience.

One such individual is Dr. Hassan A. Tetteh, a U.S. Navy combat trauma surgeon, heart and lung transplant specialist, and author. His work saving lives in war zones like Afghanistan reveals a profound and often overlooked facet of military service: the role of the healer.

* “To see young men and women with no legs and no arms… and taking care of them in a tent with no electricity, no plumbing, no running water… it changes one’s life,” Dr. Tetteh once said.

When Dr. Tetteh returned from deployment, he spoke of being in “a dark place,” haunted not only by the violence he witnessed but by the emotional toll of stitching lives back together—physically and spiritually. He turned to meditation, reflection, and service to find healing of his own. His experience reminds us that even those who save lives often carry deep wounds of their own.

* “Meditation saved my life,” he reflected. “I would retreat to the tent after our cases. I would journal, I would read. Among my favorite books was the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.”

On Memorial Day, we rightly honor those who died in combat. But perhaps we should also widen our gaze to include those who have served by preserving life amidst chaos—the combat medics, the nurses, and the battlefield surgeons who fought a different kind of battle, one stitch, one heartbeat, one act of care at a time.

For every soldier saved on the battlefield, there was someone—often unarmed—standing in the breach, holding the line between life and death.

* “Over my career, my patients have taught me the most,” Dr. Tetteh has said. “I learned from my patients that one does not have to cure to heal. Healing begins with care, compassion, and delivering human care.”

This Memorial Day, let us remember them too.

Let us honor the healers who carried the wounded, comforted the dying, and bore witness to the cost of war—not just with medals and memorials, but by seeing them as the quiet heroes they are. In every soldier who comes home, there is the unseen work of a surgeon who made that return possible.