Daniel Mason lives in California and is an MD and psychiatrist. I read The Winter Soldier on my Kindle. It tells the heartbreaking story of Lucius—a young man from a well-off military family who decides on medicine as a career against the wishes of his family. Just before he completes his medical degree in Vienna, WWI intervenes and the Austro-Hungarian empire is thrown into chaos. The young man, wishing to contribute to the war effort, enlists in the army and is sent as a medic to a casualty station located in a barely Carpathian village church.
From here on we get the story of the war, not from the trenches as in All Quiet on the Western Front, but from the hospitals where the physically maimed and psychologically scarred are dumped to be treated. Lucius is faced with barbaric sanitation, sparse medical equipment, limited drugs, and precious little food. He is relegated primarily to cutting off destroyed limbs while also attempting to cure lice, typhus, and the scourge of what was called “shell shock” in WWI and is now known as PTSS (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).
Dr. Mason spares the reader none of the stench, the blood, the suffering, and the violence that goes on behind the front lines. His diligently researched book is not for the delicate or faint of heart, but the reward is that, In spite of the conditions, Lucius manages to find romance in the person of a nun named Marguerite, who is the head nurse at the facility.
The young medic is separated from his hospital when the battle lines change, which leaves the last third of the novel to tell the story of his tragic search for his lost love. Some reviewers have even compared the book to Boris Pasternack’s Dr. Zhivago.
Mason uses his own medical knowledge with acute precision, while combining it with the history of medicine and the societal and human conflicts embodied in World War One. The title really tells it all. It reflects the chill of a landscape and a war that is rife with blizzards. The weather is as much an enemy as the opposing army and over it all hangs the pall of the horror of war. That human beings can still locate emotional warmth in this horrendous milieu is a heartwarming tribute to resiliency.
Definitely a 4.8 out of 5 for me, but a reminder that it does contain violent description.
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