William Bailey

Don Sawyer

When Don Sawyer and William Bailey were deployed last year, they left behind their wives, their children, their friends and extended families. Their scenarios at first glance were not much different than most reservists who were heading to the Middle East theater of operation.

But Sawyer’s and Bailey’s departure from their hometowns was different. These men weren’t just reservists; they were reservists who were physicians in private practice. They didn’t just leave behind family and friends, they left employees, colleagues and patients who depended on them in very private and personal ways.

Sawyer, 43, of the 452nd Combat Support Hospital, and Bailey, 57, a member of the Air Force’s 433rd Airlift Wing, are both physicians who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sawyer is a general surgeon in private practice in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine. Bailey, a reservist for 17 years, is a cardiologist in private practice with 35 other physicians at Austin Heart Hospital in Texas.

In the last 17 years, Bailey has been deployed to Honduras and Operation Southern Watch at a medical clinic in Saudia Arabia. His latest deployment was with OIF, for which he volunteered. Every time deployed, Bailey has left private practice to serve his country.

This was Sawyer’s first deployment to a combat zone and his unit was one of the first to arrive prior to the start of OIF. The group stayed stateside for three or four months until they were finally shipped to the heat, wind and sand of Afghanistan. During his five-month tour of duty, Sawyer, a 16-year member of the Reserves, was chief of surgery and performed a variety of surgical procedures. He, too, left a private practice stateside to serve his country. Unlike Bailey, Sawyer had no colleagues to cover for him so, he had to close his medical office.

“I knew that when I signed my name, that this could be a possibility,” Sawyer said of his deployment. “It was just the way it had to be.”

Sawyer did make some significant changes in his life since returning to the United States. He and his family moved from Michigan to Maine and he is now in a general surgery practice with several other physicians. Sawyer believes that being part of a group is an insurance policy of sorts for him and his patients in the event that he is deployed again.

“Even though I had to leave my family and friends as well as my patients and employees, (being deployed) was actually a very good experience for me,” Sawyer said. “It’s like you have a whole new family when you are over there. Everybody is in the same circumstance. You are doing work that makes a difference. It was a new adventure.”

As doctors, Sawyer and Bailey saw the worst of what the Operation Iraqi Freedom had to offer. Terrible injuries and death were part of everyday life. They were in a war zone.

“You realize that there are bad people out there, and that they are smart and dangerous and courageous and they will kill you at the drop of a hat,” Bailey said. “There are no rules in war.”

“But at the same time, I learned more about myself and more about giving of myself,” he added. “I learned more about the true spirit of life and love and teaching and taking care of people without the trappings of salary, pressure and obligations.”

Sawyer learned a lot about his fellow soldiers as well.

“I went into it thinking that people who were deployed would want to get home anyway possible,” he explained. “So I figured if anyone was sick or had a surgical problem they would be very quick to want to go back home. That was not the case with the vast majority of people that had problems. Most of the soldiers who needed medical attention wanted to stay there, with their unit, rather than come home. They knew they were part of a team and if a part of that team was missing it would compromise their group and mission. So most wanted to stay right there, recover and go back to work. That was pretty impressive.”

Both physicians admitted, however, that there were definite drawbacks to their deployments. Bailey believes that an active duty service member has a much different experience upon returning home than does a reservist.

“When you come back as a reservist from a deployment, you have to totally regroup,” Bailey explained. “From the standpoint of your patients you have to regroup. The group that you practice medicine with has been covering (you) so you have to regroup with them as well. Really, you need to start all over again. The transition from active duty (deployed) to active duty (duty station) is very minimal. This is a totally different context.”

In the end, Sawyer and Bailey saw themselves and all of the troops stationed in the Middle East theater of operations as ambassadors.

“The people there really did appreciate what we were doing for them,” Sawyer said. “They really had a deeper understanding of what makes Americans tick because we were there. We were the highest level of care they had ever received. And we took all (patients), whether they were Taliban or Afghani militants, women or children or our own soldiers.”

“Our mission, officially, had to be life, limb or eyesight or we couldn’t take care of them,” Sawyer continued. “That was mostly what we treated with the civilians because of the consequence of having land mines everywhere. We took care of the Afghani military forces as well, because they were really fighting right there beside our troops.”

Seeing and reflecting on those daily challenges helped both Bailey and Sawyer grow as medical professionals. And from halfway around the world their patients benefited, too.

“I think (the deployment experience) has made me a lot more sensitive to my patients, a lot more understanding with them and definitely more emphatic,” Bailey said.

“(The negative) is minimized because you realize that you went for a higher calling,” Bailey noted. “I stepped up and incurred a big huge financial loss. I am not looking for sympathy. I volunteered to be available, it was my choice, and it was a higher calling. And once you focus in on that higher calling you realize how very positive and meaningful it is. What I did, I can never replace in life.” “...we took all (patients), whether they were Taliban or Afghani militants, women or children or our own soldiers.”