Kuwait Diary: Email from the Desert Camps

by Holly Doyne

In April 2003, I said goodbye to my husband and children before leaving for Kuwait on a 12-month hardship tour. It was to be at least six months before mid-tour, if leave would be allowed by then. Checked in, and caught Lufthansa out of Frankfurt. Ever have one of those dreams in which you taxi forever and go nowhere? This was one of those off the end of the earth type experiences.With that, U.S. Army Physician Holly Doyne departed Germany for an assignment to Camp Doha as Command Surgeon, ARCENT-Kuwait, for what became a prolonged tour. This is her record of that time. It is about battling with the heat and the dust in the desert. It is about ordered chaos and confusion tempered with caring. It is a warm and lively account by a determined and compassionate physician who went to conquer, assigned to a location where making a difference really mattered.

536 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2006

Reviews

[PF · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides an exceptional and unusual view of the Iraqi War (Operation Iraqi Freedom). Army Colonel Holly Doyne was the Command Surgeon for OIF for almost a year and half. At the time of departure, she had been in theater longer than anyone else. Most books about OIF are either from the point of view of the military leadership, or from "grunts" on the front lines. This is the only book I'm aware of written by someone stationed squarely at the midpoint between those two views, offering insight and compassion into both sides. Col. Doyne's story is also exceptionally intrigued because she is herself someone who doesn't fit the stereotypes of what is an Army Colonel. For starters, she's a woman, and a tiny woman at that, with stories of some of the tensions, challenges, and supports women faced in the desert camps. She is a Jew, offering insights into functioning in military middle management in an active war zone in a Muslim country. She is a vegetarian, with stories of compromises necessary to get by as a vegetarian eating in the Army cafeterias. Personally, I found this book riveting and educational. It is not written to be an attention grabbing best seller. It is, rather, written to be a rigorously honest, straight forward, first person narrative. It is an important story to be included in any military history collection, as well as collections focused on the roles of women or Jews, or healthcare provision and advocacy.

[Mare · Rating 2 out of 5]

525 pages. The book provides the reader with 15 months of emails she wrote while serving as a Command Surgeon at Camp Doha in Kuwait. Dr. Doyne served 22 years in the military, starting in the Reserves in 1978. Her diary entries, as a whole, reveal to the reader the monotony that an Army Colonel can experience while serving a deployment.