Picture - Dr. Balserak in IraqCarla McClain of the ARIZONA DAILY STAR wrote: Leaving behind a thriving career, a young family and a safe and comfortable life, the chief of surgery at Tucson Medical Center - Dr. James Balserak - has thrown himself smack into harm's way, in the middle of the Iraq war.
Admitting some have called him nuts while others react with awe, he tries to explain why he is now, by choice, in the most dangerous place on the planet for an American.
"I think of the young men and women who could have made it home but didn't because they lacked a skilled surgeon to care for them in the field. … If I could help just one injured serviceman or woman come home safely, then this mission is accomplished," said Balserak, 40, in an e-mail this week from Baghdad International Airport.
It is there, in a hot, dusty, scorpion-infested tent city at the heart of a violent, embattled country that Balserak now lives and works on soldiers wounded in combat, sometimes flying out on medical evacuation and search-and-rescue missions. At all times, he must wear body armor and a Kevlar helmet - to chow, chapel and the latrines. Rocket and mortar fire put him to troubled sleep.
It is a very long way from the impeccably scrubbed hallways, peaceful, flowered patios and state-of-the-art operating rooms of Tucson Medical Center.
"I had to pronounce (the deaths of) two U.S. Army soldiers two nights ago," he wrote on Monday, only a week after he arrived in Iraq. "I will never forget that vision … ever. I looked at the pictures of their children, their wives and girlfriends, their pets as part of going through their personal effects. This war became very real to me then. I couldn't do anything for those two men, but I know we will do EVERYTHING for anyone who comes to Camp Sather, Iraq. War isn't hell - it's a lot worse than that."
Then, a couple days later, he sent a photograph of a bloody young man on the operating table at Camp Sather - the modern-day MASH unit at the Baghdad airport that serves as a front-line trauma center for combat-injured. This is the way it's supposed to go, Balserak said.
"He was comforted and surrounded by smiling faces as you can see," he wrote of the soldier. "He did fine. He'll be awarded a Purple Heart and will make it home to see his family, his children. That is what this is all about."
"Not a Fourth-of-July patriot"
Although the decision to volunteer - in fact, pull strings - to go to Iraq may seem baffling, it is not to those who know Jim Balserak well.
Embedded in a military family - the son of a Vietnam veteran and retired U.S. Army colonel, the brother of an Air Force fighter pilot who just returned from missions in Iraq - Balserak is a colonel and state air surgeon for the Arizona Air National Guard, which he has served for years when he is not in the operating room.
"If you knew Jim the way I know Jim, you would realize really quickly he is probably the most patriotic person you will ever meet," said his wife of 16 years, Kristi, who confesses she isn't terribly happy about her husband's move. "This is not a Fourth-of-July patriot. Love of country is the absolute core of his belief."
But even so, Balserak admits he thought the idea of uprooting himself from all that is secure - and especially from his two young sons, ages 9 and 6 - to go to war was a bit round-the-bend, at first.
Credit for getting him there, he says, goes to another young Tucson surgeon, father of two, and fellow Air National Guard officer, Dr./Lt. Col. Eric Kendle. To make the whole thing acceptable to their worried families, Kendle will split the four-month tour of duty in Iraq with Balserak, taking his place at Camp Sather in mid-November, when Balserak is due to return home.
A trigger, literally, for their action was the combat death this spring of professional football star Pat Tillman. Motivated by 9/11, the Arizona Cardinals' safety also gave up a safe and lucrative life to go fight, in Afghanistan, where he paid the ultimate price.
"That's when he (Kendle) started suggesting he and I find a way to come over here," Balserak said. "I thought he was nuts, at first."
"Time to get involved"
Also a military brat and deeply patriotic, Kendle, 42, said, "Well, maybe I am nuts - many have told us both we're crazy, and a whole lot of other things. But I told Jim I was going to do it, it was time to get involved."
Speaking quietly but passionately, Kendle said, "I've been in the military for 12 years, and what have I done? Yes, I've been trained, and I've taken care of our pilots, but I haven't done anything that makes a difference for the security of our country.
"My hope is that we will make a difference by making the world a safer place, and that our children, my sons, will not have to do this themselves. But if they must, their decision will be made in light of the service they saw their own fathers and mothers give in their time."
Well aware of the intense controversy raging in this country over whether Iraq is the right war at this time, whether it is truly part of the war on terror linked to 9/11, both Kendle and Balserak can and do argue that it is. The bottom line, they say, is that U.S. soldiers are fighting and hurting and dying in Iraq, and they have the skills to help them.
"We know they need good, qualified surgeons there, and the Air Force guys, the surgeons, are getting burned out," said Kendle. "They go in for 18 months and they go back again. They're using them over and over.
"If I can give these guys a Thanksgiving or a Christmas home, and I have to miss one, well, it's the right thing to do. If I can help these 18- and 19-year-olds who are being hurt, that's an easy call."
"The fear never leaves you"
But it was not exactly an easy call on the home front. Kendle remembers spending three hours one morning with his frightened and crying wife, Margie, explaining as best he could this decision that threatens his life. He remembers his youngest child, Zachary, 10, grabbing his leg and holding on for five minutes, asking why, over and over, when his father told him. He talked of a family member who called him selfish for putting his family through this.
"I think most of the family understands now," he said. "Margie is not thrilled, but she knows if I don't do this, I will never feel right about it."
Although she, too, has come to accept her husband's decision, Kristi Balserak said she now knows what it is to live with fear, all day, every day.
All it took was an e-mail glitch this week to put her through a miserable, sleepless night.
"I hadn't heard from him all day, and my e-mail kept getting returned. Why? Horrible thoughts go through your head. The fear never leaves you," she said.
At the airport the day Jim Balserak left Tucson for Iraq, his 6-year-old, Kevin, would not say goodbye, but instead kept asking, "Are you gonna die over there, Daddy?" his father said.
"I told Kevin our soldiers would be protecting me," he said.
What has comforted Kristi Balserak tremendously is the "amazing outpouring of support" from friends, neighbors, anyone who knows her situation.
"The support is universal"
However, there is no way around the fact that losing the chief of surgery, even for a few months, is going to be no picnic for TMC, and not easy on a city that right now has no surplus of surgeons.
"It's tough on us - it's going to be a scramble," said TMC's chief medical officer, Dr. Richard Rodriguez. "But we respect what he's doing and we support it, even if it does leave us a bit short-handed."
Balserak's partners, at Southwestern Surgery Associates, describe this time without him as "supporting the war effort."
"Oh, sure, we're all taking extra calls and extra nights," said surgeon Dr. Daniel McCabe. "But we're doing it without complaining. When we look at what he's doing, we can't."
Although physicians' opinions come down on all sides of this war, the support for Balserak and Kendle is "universal," McCabe said.
Noting that Balserak has worked on 12 or 13 "very badly injured kids" in recent days, with at least two killed, McCabe said, "He's in harm's way. He's in the middle of it.
"Tell him to please be careful. Jim, be careful."
Picture - Dr. Kendle with his F-16 at the Air National Guard
Dr. Balserak is the chief of surgery at the hospital I work at.
