WRNMMC, Bethesda, MD  –   After serving in the military for more than two decades in 2001, Dr. Dean Winslow was considering hanging up his uniform. After entering the Louisiana Air National Guard in 1980 as a general medical officer, he became a flight surgeon in 1983 and was a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine.
“9/11 happened, so I decided to stay onboard because flight surgeons were needed,” said Winslow, now a professor of medicine at Stanford University, as well as senior advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Operation Allies Welcome, a federal effort to support and resettle vulnerable Afghans. He also serves as chief medical officer for Southwest Border Migrant Health Task Force.
Winslow was guest speaker during the Uniformed Services University and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center’s Department of Medicine Virtual Grand Rounds, virtually held Jan. 21. In his talk, Winslow discussed his service in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a presentation he titled, “From Bagram Airfield to Baghdad and Back Again—A U.S. Military Doctor's Experience in Two Wars.”
“I kind of thought the war would be over in a year or two, and then I’ll retire,” Winslow said of his decision to remain in uniform following 9/11. “I ended up staying until 2015.”
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Winslow took a military flight from his home in California to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, which was already receiving casualties in its mortuary. He recalled what made him cry once he arrived at Dover, was a room where Class A uniforms were being readied for every one of the more than 150 service members killed at the Pentagon on 9/11.
From January to April 2003, Winslow served as a flight surgeon responsible for combat rescue operations from Tikrit to northern Iraq during the initial invasion. In 2006, he served as an ER physician and flight surgeon at the U.S. Air 447th EMEDS (combat hospital) in Baghdad, and in 2008, he returned to serve as hospital commander of the same unit during the Iraq surge. He deployed to the Middle East six times from 2003 to 2011 as a flight surgeon supporting combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The weapons that caused most of the injuries to coalition forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq, were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), small-arms fire, indirect fire (rockets and mortars), rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), vehicle-born IEDs, suicide-vest IEDs, and improvised rocket-assisted mortars,” Winslow said.
“What we started to see in about 2005, were these horrible devices called EFPs, or explosive-formed penetrators,” Winslow continued. “The basic technology was a rigid pipe or 155 millimeter artillery shell chocked full of homemade explosive or C-4, and fitted at the end with copper slug [disk]. With a regular IED, the blast energy would be diffused in all directions, but with an EFP, essentially all the energy is in one direction. So you have this molten slug of copper traveling at about 4,000 feet per second, so powerful that it could breach the armor of an Abrams tank. I saw horrific injuries, and often, sadly, fatalities from these devices. This is Iranian technology, and largely, Shia militia were the ones fielding these devices,” he said.
“During my two tours at the EMEDs in Baghdad, I probably unzipped more than 300 body bags, and probably 200 of them were Americans killed by these horrible EFPs,” Winslow added.
The retired colonel explained U.S. and coalition forces used various technology to try and prevent triggering the EFPs, and even attempting to trigger them before they could cause injuries and kill service members. “The thing was the bad guys figured out what we were doing,” Winslow said.
Regarding lethality of war wounds among U.S. Soldiers, Winslow said about a third of Soldiers (Union Force) died of their wounds during the Civil War from 1861-1865. “In the Korean War (1950-1953) and Vietnam War (1961-1973), when we had helicopter medevac, the mortality rate was less than 25 percent,” he added.
“For a lot of reasons, including surgical advances and trauma care, as well as a very disciplined [military medical] system, the mortality rate of combat injuries in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was less than 10 percent,” Winslow continued.
He explained the disciplined military medical system includes battalion aide stations in the field, forward surgical teams, Level III hospitals and fixed medical continental U.S. military treatment facilities. He added that the increased use of tourniquets during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also decreased the mortality rates when compared to those from previous U.S. conflicts. “Every single Soldier [during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars] had a combat application tourniquet (CAT) in their pocket, and they were trained to know how to apply it,” said the doctor.
“There is life after the terrible injuries [of war],” Winslow added. He said what amazed him was the lack of bitterness service members injured in war possessed. “They were still looking forward to living productive lives.”
“All of you are healers,” said Winslow to the USU and WRNMMC students and staff. “Go forth and spread your light (of love, the most powerful force in the universe) to the world. Always support your people. That, to me, is the most important aspect of leadership.”
He also encouraged them to take advantage of all of the experiences they have in and out of uniform.
“Don’t worry about your career being linear. Some of the diversions you take in your life and career are better than anything you could have planned,” Winslow concluded.