Blood on my Hands: a surgeon at war

Craig Jurisevic,Robert Hillman

Blood on my Hands: a surgeon at war
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Insight Publications
Country
Australia
Published
1 May 2010
Pages
350
ISBN
9780980757002

Blood on my Hands: a surgeon at war

Craig Jurisevic,Robert Hillman

The year is 1999, and for the first time since World War II, Europe is witnessing scenes of mass murder. The forces of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic have swept into Kosovo on the Balkan Peninsula leaving a trail of death and heartbreak. Scenes of Milosevic’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ play out on television screens all over the world; haunted figures huddled behind barbed wire fences, bodies heaped in ditches. Adelaide surgeon Craig Jurisevic recalls his grandfather’s ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp and resolves to honour his memory by offering his skills as a surgeon to the victims of the conflict. Leaving his wife and son in Adelaide, Jurisevic flies to the Balkans under the auspices of the International Medical Corps. Although no stranger to the battlefield, he is appalled at the unparalleled savagery of the Kosovo war. Jurisevic’s determination to put his skills to the best possible use leads him closer and closer to the frontline, and deeper into danger. Sickened by scenes of murder and massacre, he sets aside his non-partisan status and joins forces with the Kosovo Liberation Army, operating on the injured at the front and leading night-time missions behind the lines to retrieve injured Kosovar villagers. Struggling to maintain his moral bearings, Jurisevic’s journey from Adelaide to the hell of Kosovo has become a descent into the heart of darkness. Blood on My Hands tells a story of terrible suffering, of extraordinary heroism, and of the savagery that lies coiled in the human heart.

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Review

‘First, do no harm’ is the Hippocratic Oath that all medical doctors swear to when they start practising. Dr Craig Jurisevic, an Australian surgeon working on the front line of Kosovo in 1999 (when Milosevic is undertaking the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Kosovars and pushing them over the border into Albania) adds an amendment to his oath. Borrowing from Shakespeare, he adds ‘To do a great right, do a little wrong.’

In Blood On My Hands, Jurisevic details his descent from morally clear medical aid provider into the very grey area of frontline medical support. Jurisevic didn’t begin from a naïve standing start: with experience in Gaza as a combat surgeon, he had more than a little familiarity with weapons of all gauges and destructive capabilities. But he is still distressed by the injuries and disturbed by the defencelessness of the KLA (Kosovar Liberation Army) against the might and savagery of the Serbian forces.

Blood On My Hands, written with Robert Hillman, is a devastating read that hits us with the fundamental brutality of any war, the absolute truth that young, enthusiastic women and men are ‘cannon fodder’ for ignorant and politic generals absent from the front line, and reminds us that there is absolutely nothing noble about war.

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