There Were No Flowers: A Surgeon's Story of War, Family, and Love

by William Meffert

Overview

William Meffert is a surgeon. His father was a surgeon. And now, so is his son. Three generations familiar with incisions, blood, and loss. From World War II and Vietnam to modern operating rooms, they have all fought the battle for human life. Now, Meffert journeys with his son to chart his family's history through the changing world of combat surgery and beyond to reveal the universal truths that connect them across generations.

As Meffert travels with his son to field hospital locations of World War II and Vietnam, they encounter detailed memories of trauma surgery, wounded soldiers, and the effects of war—a stark reminder of its cost on humankind. Throughout, Meffert meditates on the lasting impact of conflict and the pressures of a surgeon's life, from being forced to make immediate life-or-death decisions for unknown patients, to the realities of blood and gore, to the difficulty of sharing these experiences with the uninitiated.

Linking together the individual lives of grandfather, father, and son, There Were No Flowers is a story of war, surgery, trauma, and the joys of fatherhood, family, and love in the face of it all.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940165924026
Publisher:	William Meffert, MD
Publication date:	09/27/2022
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dr. William Meffert completed medical school and surgical residency at Yale University before he followed in his father's footsteps and became an army combat surgeon. He then spent thirty years as a cardiovascular surgeon in Iowa. After retirement, Meffert volunteered as a surgeon in Haiti, Russia, and China and was appointed a consulting professor at the Stanford University Department of Surgery. There Were No Flowers: A Surgeon's Story of War, Family, and Love is a nonfiction book about his experiences as a surgeon in war. For more information, please visit www.williammeffertmd.com.

Editorial Reviews

2022-09-20
In this memoir, a man remembers his perilous service as a combat surgeon in Vietnam, an experience that prompted deeper reflections on his father’s time in the same position during World War II.

In 1942, when Meffert was only 6 years old, his father, Clyde, left for Europe to serve as a combat surgeon in World War II. Clyde was the chief surgeon in the 109th Evacuation Hospital in Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army. When Clyde returned from the war, he resumed his surgical practice but as a changed man—now quieter, he reticently refused to discuss experiences that clearly troubled him. A quarter of a century later, when the author was 29 years old and a physician like his father, Meffert was deployed to Vietnam to work as a combat surgeon as well, a grim experience that gave him a small portal into his father’s own soul. But the author still remained unsatisfied—at the age of 81, he traveled to Normandy with his son, Stephen, also a surgeon, to retrace Clyde’s movements with Patton’s Army. Two years later, Meffert and Stephen would make a similar trip to Vietnam. With impressive candor and thoughtfulness, the author reflects on his own bleak encounter with war as well as the fraught but joyful nature of fatherhood. His meditations are brimming with insights, including about the limited guidance in combat one can limn from the Hippocratic Oath: “But what if all choices are bad, even catastrophic?” Meffert returned from Vietnam a transformed man—he was deeply disillusioned by the lies that catalyzed a war that killed and maimed so many. In achingly poignant terms, he conveys the understanding he achieved of his father’s eerie silence: “How can you talk about the dead, the torn bodies, and the desperate surgery without pulling unwanted memories out of your mind and reopening pathways to the horror that had slowly faded through the years?”

A surgeon’s remarkable family account, emotionally affecting and profound.

Kirkus Reviews