Navy surgeon saves lives in Afghanistan, Iraq

Navy surgeon saves lives in Afghanistan, Iraq
CBS NEWS
By NOREEN O'DONNELL
October 29, 2013

Even as a trauma surgeon, U.S. Navy Capt. Joseph Rappold was not fully prepared for the kinds of devastating injuries he encountered in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrible damage done by the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that marked the wars.

"I think when you see one of these wounded in front of you for the first time it's like, jeez where do you start," he said.

But quickly, his training took over and although he never became numb, as a surgeon on the front line, he did compartmentalize the bloodshed around him, he said.

"We have a whole generation of surgeons now in the military that I don't think there's much that they can see that fazes them any more," he said. "But certainly the first time you see it, it clearly leaves an impression on your mind."

Rappold, 53, retired from the military in January 2012, after seven deployments as a medical corps officer to Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in Afghanistan with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and in Iraq in Baghdad, Balad, Mosul, Tikrit and in the fierce fighting in Ramadi in 2006.

Two years later, he served as the director of the Joint Theater Trauma System, responsible for all surgical care in both wars. And then just when he thought he had come back to the United States for good, he was asked to return to war one more time in 2009, to the British field hospital at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

Connie Johnson knows Rappold through her work as a coordinator in the trauma program at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany. He saved many lives, but took his losses hard, she said.
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