Eleven years after retiring as director of the NATO Rolle III Multinational Medical Unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan, US Navy Captain Michael McCarten, DO ’83, knew he had one more mission to carry out: to stay connected with the sailors he served with in Kandahar. “When you serve in a warzone, you can’t help but change. You come out with an uncommon bond with those who served alongside you. It’s an emotional experience, and you just don’t forget those people,” he explained.
In August 2022, McCarten organized a reunion for the group of medical professionals he served with during what he calls both the worst of times and the best of times. “On the one hand, a year on the battlefield is a tough, adrenaline-fueled year. It’s savage. The enemy wants you dead, and in return, you want them dead or at least gravely injured”, said McCarten, a 30-year Navy veteran. “On the other hand, the medical facility was state-of-the-art. I had a staff of about two hundred, and it was an impressive operation. Compared to the Vietnam era where the battlefield survival rate was about 70%, we were recording a 97% survival rate. In fact, the Surgeon General of the Navy recently spoke at a forum where he told the attendees that if he were in a car crash and had the option of going to the George Washington Medical Center, or going to Kandahar, he’d go to Kandahar.”
McCarten recognized that the success the medical unit was due to the people who were working with him. “These people were all professionals, and I recognized that they, like me, were experiencing life-changing events. We were all in it together.” Regardless of rank, this group was bonded together and it has been important to McCarten to keep them connected.