Lt Cdr Heidi Kraft - More Than a Movie Star

[Kat]

In response to John's Major Movie Star post and as it is Women's History Month, Carrie sends me this link about someone who knows how to wear her uniform right:

Lt Cdr Dr Heidi Kraft will be donating 10% of her book sales to the Marine Semper Fi Fund:

Dr. Heidi Kraft, Navy Psychologist and Graduate of the SDSU/UCSD JDP in Clinical Psychology, Writes a Memoir About Her Experiences in Iraq:

"Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital"

Former Lieutenant Commander Kraft spent nine years as a U.S. Navy Psychologist, and over seven months at a remote air base in western Iraq. The title for her new book, "Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital", comes from an episode from the first season of the M*A*S*H television series, "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet." In this 1973 episode, Hawkeye, a surgeon, realizes he cannot save an underage Marine. Henry says to Hawkeye: "In war Rule #1 is that young men die. And Rule #2 is that doctors cannot change rule #1."

Read an excerpt of the book here

Dr. Kraft held the hand of a dying marine, Cpl Jason Dunham, who was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends and comrades. She wrote a rather famous piece that made its way around the blogosphere: Memories of Iraq: Good and Bad

The Good...

"Meeting a young sergeant, who had lost an eye in an explosion ... he asked his surgeon if he could open the other one ... when he did, he sat up and looked at the young Marines from his fire team who were being treated for superficial shrapnel wounds in the next room ...

"He smiled, laid back down, and said, 'I only have one good eye, Doc, but I can see that my Marines are OK.'

The Bad

"Ushering a sobbing Marine colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain inside. Meeting that 21-year-old Marine with three Purple Hearts, and listening to him weep because he felt ashamed of being afraid to go back.

A mother of two children, Dr. Kraft currently splits her work-time between two positions, as the Deputy Program Coordinator for the US Navy's Combat Stress Control Program (on a contract with SAIC) and as as a Clinical Psychologist, specializing in combat trauma, at the Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton.