Posted on 12/27/2008 1:47:53 PM PST by arjay
John P. Pryor, 42, of Moorestown, the dedicated leader of the University of Pennsylvania's trauma team and a decorated major in the Army Reserve who wrote eloquently about the painful parallels between battlefield deaths and urban homicides, was killed on Christmas by enemy fire in Iraq while serving as a combat surgeon.
Dr. Pryor deployed Dec. 6 and was with a risky frontline surgical unit when he was killed by shrapnel from a mortar round. It was his second tour of duty in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Hard to understand why things like this happen.
He wasn’t even there that long.
Thanks for posting.
Hand...Salute.
Heartbreakingly sad. Prayers for his loved ones and friends.
“In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies,” Pryor wrote in an August 2007 article published in The Washington Post. “Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one.
“More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq,” he wrote. “There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa.”
The War in West Philadelphia
By John P. Pryor
Sunday, August 5, 2007; Page B07
I didn’t hear the cars screech to a halt, but one of the trauma nurses did. He ran outside with two emergency department medics to find several people in a car, all of their clothes soaked with blood. The passengers were screaming for someone to help the young man in the front seat, who was unresponsive. The team threw the limp victim onto a gurney, one of several that stand waiting for these types of scenarios, which occur almost nightly at our trauma center.
As the gurney rolled in, I saw a lifeless young man with more gunshot wounds than I could count. I was poised to start a resuscitation effort when a voice behind me announced that three more were coming in. As the team started CPR and checked for cardiac activity, the second and third victims were wheeled in.
I salute you, Dr. Pryor and pray for your family.
A tragic, terrible loss!!
God Bless his sweet soul, and may the Lord comfort his family in their grief.
His loss is just beyond words, they all are but I keep thinking of his skills and caring heart taken from us. May God bless his family, comfort them, restore them to carry on in the same manner as the son, father and husband that was John Pryor.
Pryor deployed Dec. 6 for his second tour of duty in Iraq as a combat medic with the Army Reserves, and was due to come home in April, Schwab said. He said Pryor had studied Arabic, knowing he could be dealing with wounded Iraqi civilians — especially children — and wanted to make them feel at ease.
Pryor wrote of his experiences as a surgeon confronting violence in Iraq and inner-city Philadelphia in articles published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post.
“As a trauma surgeon, every death I have is painful; every one takes a little out of me,” he wrote in a 2006 article in the Inquirer. “Losing these kids here in Iraq rips a hole through my soul so large that it’s hard for me to continue breathing.
“If I could say something to this Marine’s parents, it would be this: I am so sorry that you have lost your son. We, more than almost everyone else, know he was a true American hero.”
http://iraq.pigstye.net/article.php/JohnPPryor
From the Iraq army base where he was stationed, Dr. John P. Pryor never failed to call his wife and kids each day at their home in Burlington County.
So when his wife, Carmela Calvo Pryor, didn’t receive that daily phone call on Christmas day, she assumed her husband, a trauma surgeon, was busy trying to save the life of a patient. After all, she had seen a report on CNN about a deadly mortar attack at the Mosul base where he was staying.
Except this time he was the casualty.
Pryor, a 42-year-old Moorestown resident, was killed Christmas morning in his sleeping quarters when a mortar round struck his trailer, killing him instantly, said his brother, Richard Pryor. He had gone back to his trailer after a holiday Mass and was probably asleep, said his brother, also a doctor.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-14/1230355844130020.xml&coll=1
“He was a surgeon who just gave 100 percent commitment to his career,” the brother said. “He was always working, trying to be the best surgeon he could. He helped perfect strangers who required emergency care, victims of trauma. He was also a compassionate, loving, doting father.”
The family learned of his death on Christmas night after Army officials tracked down his wife, who was visiting friends and family in Brooklyn, N.Y., and his parents, Victoria and Richard Pryor, who were in Saint Lucie, Fla.
“We are very devastated,” his wife said last night when reached at her home.
I was going to post something but I could not think of anything that would asequately express my sorrow.
I’ll just go back to my lame life and not living up to this man’s example. After I’m done crying.
My son was in Mosul in 2003 and his group was mortared every damn day for ten months. Turns out their interpreter Abul was spotting targets for his jehadi friends. This attack doesn't seem to be random either.
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