12, 20 & 5

Assigned to the marine camp at Phu Bai, Dr. John A. Parrish confronted all manner of medical trauma, quickly shedding the naïveté of a new medical intern. With this memoir, he crafts a haunting, humane portrait of one man’s agonizing confrontation with war. With a wife and two children awaiting his return home, the young physician lives through the most turbulent and formative year of his life—and finds himself molded into a true doctor by the raw tragedy of the battlefield. His endless work is punctuated only by the arrival of the next helicopter bearing more casualties, and the stark announcements: “12 litter-borne wounded, 20 ambulatory wounded, and 5 dead.”

12, 20 & 5 is an intimate and unique look at the effects of war that Library Journal calls “an autobiographical M*A*S*H* . . . phenomenal.”