Originally aired on February 25, 2008.
Tom Fudge: We hear a lot about combat stress and the way the experience of warfare brings a new mentality to the people who go through it. Lt. Cmdr. Heidi Kraft experienced warfare in the role of a medic. To be exact, she was a clinical psychologist with Alfa Surgical Company. She was deployed from Camp Pendleton to serve nine months with Marine forces in Iraq.
Among the people she treated was a dying man who sacrificed his own life by throwing himself on a grenade to protect his comrades. Once Heidi returned to San Diego, she wrote a poem about her time in Iraq that became quite a phenomenon on the Internet. That lead to her writing a book called Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital.
Guest
- Dr. Heidi Kraft , former lieutenant commander in the US Navy. She served as a psychologist in a Marine Corps surgical company in Iraq in 2004.
