Healing Lessons from a War Zone

As an Army medic in Iraq and Afghanistan, I discovered the spirit of healing even in a world at war.

By Specialist Brian Antczak

During my time serving as a combat medic with the US Army in support of both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I’ve repeatedly relied on faith and spirituality to help me accomplish my mission of providing quality medical assistance to those in need. Reciprocally, I found that the lessons of healing I learned from my patients, friends, and fellow soldiers helped me to understand my own faith, and to develop a better perspective of it in a world of strife and conflict.

I’m not an expert, and I’m not a hero. I speak as an average citizen, soldier, and layperson who has been a few places and seen a few things. But I have benefited from the wisdom and teaching of other medical providers and spiritual leaders, and it is from these combined experiences that I draw the following insights.

Those of us in more peaceful settings often find ourselves struggling with obstacles that seem insurmountable. We may find ourselves or our loved ones battling disease, or we might be simply trying to recover from the trials of life. I hope that these lessons I learned in my military service might relate to our own practice of improving our quality of life and nourishing the spiritual needs our communities and ourselves.

Please click here to read the first lesson.

SPC Brian Antczak is a combat medic with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. He is a native of Durham, NC.

Music Heals

While guarding an outpost in Baghdad in 2006, I found my first days in a combat zone rife with scenes of violence throughout the city. But in the quiet moments of the morning and night, the mosque across the square from our compound would air calls to prayer by various singers and styles. The sonorous music often calmed my heart in a way that helped me to be mindful of the world around me, and also helped to find peace. Rather than a distraction, music can be a way to help the body and mind focus on peace and happiness, rather than fear or pain of suffering.

In Afghanistan, I had a man in my care who had suffered immeasurably from a mortar blast. The explosion left him with severe wounds and blinded him in both eyes. Daily, we cleaned and dressed his wounds and gave him medical therapy to try to stave off infection. He was depressed and emaciated, having lost the will to survive. But on the recommendation of our doctor, we played soothing music for him while we performed the daily treatments. Miraculously, both his health and his emotional state improved, and in a few weeks, he was smiling and joking with us in a way that astounded his family. For a man without sight, music was a doorway to healing that we could not realize, but was fully realized in him.

Communication Doesn’t Mean We All Speak the Same Language

One of the greatest obstacles to patient care in a foreign country is communication. Language barriers make it difficult to properly assess patient and understand underlying issues such as pain or mental status. Cultural barriers such as fasting during the month of Ramadan, or the care of women patients by male medics also presented challenges to helping local people during humanitarian operations. During part of one deployment, I worked with a group of Polish medical personnel, though I had far less comprehension of their language than they did mine. Despite these differences, we relied on each others help on numerous occasions. Through these experiences, we developed a level of trust and understanding that stepped over the barrier between us; overcoming that barrier requires effort—and a little faith.

Through the courageous efforts of many interpreters, I have been able to provide assistance to those whom I would be unable to help otherwise. However, when one steps back, and realizes the underlying connection between all humanity, there is a way to see that despite the things that separate us in our daily lives, there is a place where we can come together and work to solve problems. Sometimes listening to a patient goes beyond mere language; it goes to heart of empathy, and being able to connect on another level. Underneath it all, we all have the same human soul.

Illness is Not Always Physical

A woman came to my clinic once with her sister and a village elder. She was suffering from an unknown illness with signs of high fever and fatigue, and she was unable to eat. Her husband was very worried for her. While our initial treatment was for an infectious disease, we realized more was going on over the course of her therapy. Soon we realized that she was grieving over the death of her adolescent son, who’d been lost to an explosion weeks earlier. Following the initial trauma of the incident, she continued to suffer from depression underneath her more apparent, external illness. Although we could continue treating her for her infectious condition, we realized that her emotional suffering was contributing to her failure to thrive.

There are few losses more egregious than a parent losing a child to violence. But many issues can be debilitating for any of us, as well as our patients. Mental, emotional, and spiritual health can all influence our physical well-being. This is common sense for anyone who has been nursed from sickness or injury by a loved one. We may encounter people in our lives who are dealing with visible problems, and we may make an effort to understand those issues. But understanding the more subtle underlying effects of grief and emotional distress may also be necessary to helping others return to a physiological balance.

We All Have Something to Give

Many of the world’s faiths teach the practice of charity. Whether as a monetary donation, or taking time to visit those who are imprisoned or dying, many of us are called to use our gifts and blessings to help those who may seem without. Personally, I believe in returning at least ten percent of my financial wealth to God. While this act is not without hesitation for many of us caught within our own daily struggles, sometimes the reasons can be crystal clear when seen outside the boundary of our own lives.

The diseases that many of my patients suffer from could be prevented by simple public health practices taken for granted by many of us in developed nations. Even educated people living in poverty may not possess the resources or supplies necessary to prevent problems resulting from improper sanitation, personal and dental hygiene, nutrition, and disease prophylaxis. I have seen countless children with skin lesions covering their entire bodies, even in their mouths and ears. I held a four month old girl who was so emaciated her bones stood out gaunt like a child skeleton in a covering of flesh. I wonder what would have happened to these same children if their parents and communities had the social and medical infrastructure they needed to prevent these ghastly health issues. War obviously complicates these matters, either in ruining supply lines or economic and political stability, but the actions of individuals, either separate or united, can do amazing things to combat the trials these people face. I’m glad to say that through the efforts of the military units I worked with, many of those same children were cured of life threatening infection and malnutrition.

Whether through the efforts of the US military or other nations, or the donations of non-governmental organizations and religious groups, many people have made a dramatic difference in the lives of people suffering from war and poverty, even if they were complete strangers. It is this ethic of religion than can overcome the divisiveness of fundamentalism in many faiths, probably more so than any other. And it is through these actions of charity, that many of the perils of disease and suffering can be overcome, for the good of all.

Prayer is a Path to Peace

For me, as for many people, prayer is as much an act of listening as it is of speaking. Often when I am frustrated, angry, or in despair, I find myself closing my eyes, bowing my head, and presenting a concern and question before God. While the answer rarely comes with any immediacy, I have been surprised at how the silence that follows has yielded understanding and a sense of peace.

In the military lives of service members, particularly during deployments, our missions dictate our individual lives in ways that seem beyond our control. This can also be true in civilian life, and the resulting helplessness can lead to frustration and sadness. I am not someone who deals with sudden changes easily, despite the “hurry up (and wait)” mentality of the Army. But to try to manage, I’ve often found myself often asking, simply, “why?” in the darkest moments of my life. Often, an answer has come with clarity and has humbled me to realize that while my personal struggles may seem important, that there are sometimes reasons beyond my comprehension for the events in my life. Sometimes after one of these moments of prayer, I have found myself in a position to help improve the quality of life for a local family, or to be there for a wounded soldier. I can’t hope to control everything in my life, or to understand the nature of human suffering and healing. But personally, prayer has answered many of the questions I’ve sought, even if it was in unexpected ways, or ways I may never completely understand.

No One Dies Alone

There have been several times in my career, where despite the best efforts of my comrades and myself, we have been unable to save the life of a patient. These times can be both conflicted and de-moralizing, filled with second-guessing and guilt. The worst blow comes when dealing with the death of a soldier. One of my most haunting memories was seeing the eyes of a man shot by a sniper flash open, red and bloodshot, and then glaze over as he fell back with a convulsion and died. In another case, a local woman dying from a snakebite grew increasingly agitated, until she didn’t even know where she was or what was going on. The silence that followed was striking.

I don’t pretend to understand something as unfathomable as death. I don’t pretend to have any true insight to the spiritual nature of it. It is a question that remains unanswered for many veterans who have lost comrades in battle. It remains unanswered for the wife and daughter of the soldier I watched die. But if there is any truth in the matter, it is that these people do not die alone. They do not die forgotten.

Like the eyes of the soldier, the eyes of the Afghan woman who died in our care remain indelible in my mind. But her memory and his memory will live on through me, through their families, through the people who were present for the last moments of their lives. Death in war is a reminder that this violence should not be. And it is up to those of us who survive it to remember those caught in its path, and ensure that eventually, there is an end to violence and struggle, that there is an end to suffering. We must work to ensure that is a place where all of our prayers can find a common ground.

We Are Stronger Than We Think

On one unremarkable morning, I suddenly found myself treating seven Afghan soldiers from an IED blast in the space of two minutes. Fortunately, I had the help of numerous soldiers trained in basic lifesaving care and was able to help direct the organized chaos to see that all the casualties were stabilized and connected to higher medical care. Being part of an event so massive and unexpected was incredibly draining, for all of us, but also a lesson in teamwork and preparation.

Rarely do I have the luxury before an emergency situation of saying a prayer, centering myself, and driving on with the work I need to do with a renewed sense of purpose. More often, I am caught by surprise and having to act on my training, working quickly to focus on the task at hand. However, I would not have gotten through many moments in my life, if it wasn’t for the prayers of strength to overcome them. Often I have looked back and felt that the Holy Spirit, however you may perceive Spirit to be, was with me in those events. At the quiet points of my life, I didn’t realize it, but the gathering of that inner peace and willpower was what saw through the days when it mattered most.

Courage is Everywhere

One of the bravest people I’ve ever seen was a 10-year-old boy whose lower legs had been blown off by a roadside bomb. Despite the massive trauma to his body, he was calm and didn’t cry once as our team rushed to stop the bleeding and stabilize him for transport. A large part of his serenity was probably due to the shock of the injury. However, I have also seen adult men in similar conditions who writhed in agony or cried out in pain. Something in that young boy gave him enough courage to accept whatever fate had given him, and to allow that fate to run its course without fear.

Fear is a constant presence to those of us in conflict. We may push it aside and try to ignore it, but that will only make the shock all the greater when we are forced to confront it at the worst times. There are many times when I’ve been reminded of that young boy, and I’ve had to realize that similarly, there is only so much I can do to change the course of life around me. The worst I can do is stand numbly in shock, but in those moments, I have been fortunate in that there was something pushing me on, and keeping me focused on my mission. In the end, all I could do was face that fear, and drive on through it, knowing that it was not my self, but something greater than myself that mattered.

Mercy is a Virtue

According to the agreements made by the United States in the Geneva Convention, all wounded persons are to be given equal regard in terms of treatment: friend, innocent, and enemy alike. In practice, this can be a difficult matter for a soldier and medical provider to reconcile internally. The patient you are fighting to save may have been responsible for ending the lives of many others, including your friends and comrades. Despite this moral and emotional quandary, I have seen honor in many soldiers who provided life-saving medical attention to enemy combatants who only moments before had tried to kill them. In my mind, we must take our faith in a greater good, and not let the petty evils of humanity overcome us. It is no easy task. But when I look past it, and see a man lying broken before me, he is still a human being, and I do not believe it is my place to judge him. I only pray that what I do is right.