By Rich Fisher
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-902841.mp3
Tulsa, Oklahoma – On today's StudioTulsa, we speak with Dr. Dave Hnida (of Littleton, Colorado) and Dr. Rick Reutinger (of Muskogee, Oklahoma). Dr. Hnida joins us by phone; Dr. Reutinger is with us in the studio. Dr. Hnida has just published a memoir called "Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq," and Dr. Reutinger --- the two men are now friends; they met while both voluntarily serving at a U.S. Army Combat Support Hospital (or CSH) in Iraq in 2007 --- figures prominently in this book. As they tell us on today's program, the CSH at which they were stationed was much like a modern-day M*A*S*H, where wounded soldiers arrived in great numbers, and at all hours --- and where humor or comic relief were sometimes the only way by which one could deal with so much bloodshed and tragedy and trauma. Staffed only by reservists --- who tended to be older, more-experienced doctors (and who were sometimes rather disdainful of authority) --- the CSH where these two doctors served also boasted an amazingly high survival rate, 98 percent.