Who Fights This War--Flight Surgeon

Lt. Col. David Doud, 42, returned home to Gettysburg last week at the end of his tour as flight surgeon for the 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion. Doud joined the battalion in 2006 after serving as the Medical Company Commander for the 728th Maintenance Support Battalion.
He has nearly 18 years of service in the Army National Guard as a doctor. Doud deployed to Kosovo with the 56th Brigade in 2003-4 as the Brigade Surgeon. On this deployment Doud had the opportunity to fly with the Nebraska MEDEVAC Company attached to the 56th. After deployment he took the training course at Fort Rucker to be qualified as a flight surgeon then moved to the 2-104th.
The day Doud remembers most clearly on this deployment is June 10, when a suicide bomber in Al-Batha killed and wounded many civilians. The Tallil Medical facility asked Doud to help their staff with the emergency surgery patients that were being flown in. Doud said, “I treat car accident victims and gunshot wounds in the States, but the damage to the human body by high explosives is beyond anything I had seen.” Doud and his team
treated five patients.
Two had non-survivable injuries and were made as comfortable as possible. The other three were critical, but Doud was able to perform surgery that kept them alive for evacuation to a larger medical facility. “The three critical patients lived. We made a difference.”