Yancy Caruthers (1971- )grew up in
Alton, MO, and joined the Army Reserves at 17. He became a nurse, and
worked in several areas until finding a passion in emergency
medicine, which ultimately led to a job with an air ambulance
company. He served in Iraq two different times, and retired from the
Army as a Captain.
After this experience, he decided to
leave the medical profession and pursue other endeavors. He has now
lived on three continents, and is hoping to reside on at least three
more. He currently lives with his family in Nassau, The Bahamas.
Author Links -
Book Genre: Memoir, Military/Medical
Publisher: Independent (CreateSpace and
Kindle Direct Publishing)
Release Date: eBook April 2014,
paperback May 2014
Buy Link(s):
Book Description: Northwest of Eden is
the author's first person account of his experience during Operation
Iraqi Freedom as second-in-command of an Army emergency department
and leader of an air transport team. The varied cast of characters
provides top-notch medical care to service members in harsh
conditions, while wielding the darkest humor against each other just
to stay sane. Most of the time they succeeded...
Excerpt:
My nose hairs stung as I shook the
sleep from my head. The putrid smell was back in force, although I
hadn’t noticed it the night before. I reminded myself to call
someone in housing and have them try to disrupt whatever animal
funerals were occurring under my hooch.
I sat down in my office and rested
my head on my left hand, feeling stubble there. I hadn’t forgotten
to shave, but I’d somehow skipped that half of my face.
“You look like hell,” Maria
said.
“I love you, too,” I replied.
I went on to tell her the details of the prior night’s flying
adventure. I was just wrapping up the story when I looked up to see
Sullivan.
“I just wanted to apologize for
last night,” she began. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging
with an unstable patient but I had to have eyes out.”
“I understand that. What was
going on up there?” I asked. I wanted to ask what was more
important than giving our patient CPR, but I held off, figuring Sully
would explain it, and she did.
We had taken fire.
Apparently some idiot with a
machine gun had opened fire on us, and the pilots had released
several clusters of flares to mask our position, then banked sharply
to fly sideways to our original course.
Sully laughed as she told me the
rest – the bad guy had then turned on a spotlight, trying to shine
through the flares to get another crack at us, but he discovered an
interesting military fact instead.
The Cobra AH-1 attack helicopter
also has a spotlight.
Upon seeing our escort craft, the
dirtbag repented of his terroristic ways and ran full speed into the
bushes. I waited with anticipation to hear about how the AH-1 fired
a rocket up this guy’s ass, but apparently when the medical chopper
one is supposed to be protecting takes off in a dead sprint at 150
mph, it’s considered bad form to stick around to shoot one bad guy,
so they peeled away and followed us.
Sully’s commander would later
tell me that we hadn’t taken “enough” fire for the engagement
to qualify as a combat action.
So I was content to know that we
got shot at “some.” I was also glad that the guy wasn’t that
good at it.
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