No Place to Hide
A Brain Surgeon’s Long Journey Home from the Iraq War
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Join Air Force veteran Dr. W. Lee Warren as he chronicles his fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening experience as a neurosurgeon in an Iraq War combat hospital.
Warren's life as a neurosurgeon in a trauma center began to unravel long before he shipped off to serve the U.S. Air Force in Iraq in 2004. When he traded a comfortable, if demanding, practice in San Antonio, Texas, for a ride on a C-130 into the combat zone, he was already reeling from months of personal struggle.
At the 332nd Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Warren realized his experience with trauma was just beginning. In his 120 days in a tent hospital, he was trained in a different specialty--surviving over a hundred mortar attacks and trying desperately to repair the damages of a war that raged around every detail of every day. No place was safe, and the constant barrage wore down every possible defense, physical or psychological.
One day, clad only in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and running shoes, Warren was caught in the open while round after round of mortars shook the earth and shattered the air with their explosions, stripping him of everything he had been trying so desperately to hold on to.
In No Place to Hide, Warren tells his story in a brand-new light, sharing how you can:
Discover who you are under pressureLean on faith in your darkest daysFind the strength to carry on, no matter what you're facing
Whether you are in the midst of your own struggles with faith, relationships, finances, or illness, No Place to Hide will teach you that how you respond in moments of crisis can determine your chances of survival.
Praise for No Place to Hide:
"No Place to Hide captures simply, eloquently, and passionately what it means to be a physician in time of war. Over ten years of war, we safely air evacuated more than ninety thousand injured and ill from Iraq and Afghanistan--five thousand were the sickest of the sick. This very personal story captures the essence of what it takes to be a military physician and the challenge for our nation to reintegrate all who deploy to war."
--Lt. Gen. (ret.) C. Bruce Green, MD, 20th AF Surgeon General
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The horrors of war are told in conversational, blunt fashion by neurosurgeon Warren, who relates memories of his year caring for patients in war-torn Iraq. Warren, who had mastered the art of hiding behind a surgical mask, decides to leave his medical practice, his ministry as a church worship leader, and his failing marriage and children to seek answers as a doctor in an Air Force hospital near the front. His troubles pale in comparison to the shattered lives, supply shortages, and suffering he encounters at war. In a well-written narrative, mixed with actual email reports he sent home, Warren transports the reader to the battle zone and shares his thoughts, raw emotions, opinions on America's involvement in Iraq, and lessons learned during his tour of duty. Most poignant are the heart-wrenching stories of injured children and the agonizing decisions he must make about which victims to save and which ones he can't. Warren's war experiences bring him closer to God, provide insight into his own character flaws, and don't leave him, even after he returns home to address the problems he left behind.
