Armed conflict has served as a catalyst for medical innovation for millennia, driving the creation of new paradigms like patient evacuation, blood transfusion, and the concept of triage. Veterans returning from the battlefields of Vietnam defined the need for a specialty that could treat patients in the first stages of an illness or injury, providing life-saving diagnostics and resuscitation in the face of uncertainty.

Battle Forged traces the evolution of emergency medicine from Vietnam to the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, where doctors blended the knowledge of internists with the basic procedural skills of a surgeon. They saw pregnant women, children, elderly, sore throats, and psychiatric crises. They became the foundation of a new specialty, using their battlefield experience to mold the formation of training programs, research networks, and patient movement systems that underpin care of acute life-threatening events all over the world.

Witness the creation of military emergency medicine, as told by the doctors who created history with their service to the country and their patients.

Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Torree McGowan, MD, FACEP, is a 2001 US Air Force Academy distinguished graduate. She earned her medical doctorate from Oregon Health and Science University and completed her emergency medicine residency with the US Air Force. A combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, she retired after twenty-seven years of service in the active and reserve Air Force and Oregon Air National Guard components. She is a nationally recognized expert in disaster preparedness and mass casualty response, continuing her service to patients and physicians through her work with the American College of Emergency Physicians and lecturing on patient safety, mass casualty management, and trauma care.