Army - Kicking Tires On Jltv

He’s the Army
Surgeon Will Serve ‘As Long as I Can’
Dr. Frederick Lough had been out of uniform for more
than a decade at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. The former Army lieutenant
colonel had served for 17 years before
separating to pursue a civilian career
as a heart surgeon. Still, in the weeks
and months following 9/11, he felt the
urge to do more for his country.
So he did just that. Lough joined
the Army Reserve in 2007; two years
later, he was promoted to colonel. And
in 2013, at the age of 64, Lough returned
to active duty.
“When I looked at my life, the Army
had been everything to me,” Lough
said. “They educated me through college,
through being a surgeon. … With
the fights going on in Iraq and Afghanistan
and the casualties coming, I
felt that I just could not stand on the
sidelines.”
Lough grew up in a military family;
his father was a career Army officer
who served for four decades. The family
moved frequently until finally settling
down near the U.S. Military
Col. (Dr.) Frederick Lough
Academy. Naturally, Lough said, a military career seemed like
a perfect fit.
Lough graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served
as an engineer officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
A few years later, he turned his attention to medical school.
Although the Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences (USUHS) did not exist at the time, there was a
scholarship program for Army officers to attend civilian medical
schools. Lough was accepted into the program and went
on to graduate from George Washington University’s School
of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C.
After completing residencies in general surgery and thoracic
and cardiovascular surgery at what’s now Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Lough remained
at Walter Reed as a general surgeon. As time went on,
he served in Korea and came back to continue his training at
Walter Reed.
As Lough approached 17 years of service, he received a call
from a former military surgeon asking him to join a practice in
Pennsylvania. Lough separated from the Army and as a civilian
surgeon, continued perfecting his craft, performing thousands
of surgeries.
By the early 2000s, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq going
full force, Lough felt an obligation to get back to the Army
and be involved again. He worked with medical recruiters and
about six years after 9/11, joined the
Army Reserve. In 2010, he was deployed
for three months to far western
Afghanistan, where he led a group of
U.S. doctors working alongside Bulgarian
surgeons at a Spanish-run NATO
hospital.
“We were the first American group
of physicians to be in this non-Englishspeaking
NATO hospital,” Lough said.
Despite the language barrier and different
styles of medical care, Lough and
his colleagues made it work. “It was a
great challenge, but it was also very
stimulating; fun, in a certain way,” he
said. “Every day was a new, ‘OK, how
do we do this?’ and at the same time,
we’re getting combat casualties in who
are, in some cases, severely wounded
and you have to negotiate with other
people how to do things. It required a
lot of mental agility.”
Lough deployed in 2012 to another
area in Afghanistan, where he faced a
much higher volume of combat casualties.
“I felt like I was dealing with situations that were why I became
a doctor in the first place,” he said. “Someone would be
hurt and the only question was, what was wrong and could
you help them and could you make them better.”
“It was great that the people that I worked with were totally
dedicated to trying to make this soldier better,” he said. “It
didn’t matter whether the soldier was an American soldier, an
Afghan soldier or a Spanish soldier—or whatever nationality.
Everybody did everything they could. So it really was, from a
physician standpoint, just spectacular because you really were
doing your craft. You were really working as a surgeon to take
care of things.”
After returning home from his second deployment, Lough
requested to return to active duty full time and in 2013, he was
officially welcomed to the surgery department at USUHS in
Bethesda. Today, he continues his work as a surgeon, professor
and mentor.
“The privilege and the opportunity to serve is so precious
that every day is a gift,” Lough said. “I am really benefited by
working at the great medical school here … and with great
people. It is no question that I’ll keep going as long as I can.”
—Jennifer Benitz
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences/Sharon Holland
February 2016 ■ ARMY 17