To Heal the Wounded

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

The pictures show shredded limbs, burned faces, profusely bleeding wounds. The subjects are mostly American G.I.’s, but they include Iraqis and Afghans, some of them young children.

They appear in a new book, “War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007,” quietly issued by the United States Army — the first guidebook of new techniques for American battlefield surgeons to be published while the wars it analyzes are still being fought.

Its 83 case descriptions from 53 battlefield doctors are clinical and bone dry, but the gruesome photographs illustrate the grim nature of today’s wars, in which more are hurt by explosions than by bullets, and body armor leaves many alive but maimed.

And the cases detail important advances in treating blast amputations, massive bleeding, bomb concussions and other front-line trauma.

Though it is expensively produced and includes a foreword by the ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff, who was severely injured by a roadside bomb in 2006, “War Surgery” is not easy to find. There were strenuous efforts within the Army over the last year to censor the book and keep it out of civilian hands.

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