The presentation includes a description of the historical background of the Yom Kippur War and its effects on the Israeli society, as well as my own personal experiences and challenges as a battalion physician in the Sinai. I plan to speak on the physical and psychological traumas my soldiers had to cope with, the effect of religion on them, the cost of war in human life and suffering, the challenges of caring for wounded enemy soldiers, and the daily struggle for survival in the difficult war which threatened Israel’s existence.

Lecture by Itzhak Brook, M.D., M.Sc., is a Professor of Pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington DC. He was born and raised in Haifa, Israel and earned his medical degree from Hebrew University, Hadassah School of Medicine, in Jerusalem. He served in the Israeli army as a medic in the Six Day War in 1967 and as a battalion physician during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Subsequently, he completed a fellowship in adult and pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, School of Medicine. He served in the medical corps of the US Navy for 27 years.