From doctor to soldier

When Heike Groos joined the Bundeswehr as a doctor more than 20 years ago, she confesses it was just because she was looking for a job. Back in 1987, when she started working as an emergency medical officer in a Germany Army hospital, she was still only a doctor. That changed when she was sent to Afghanistan in 2002. She became a doctor - and a soldier.

When Groos was sent out to Afghanistan, she did so without any question and without any concern. Even when it became obvious that she was now both a doctor and a soldier, armed with a weapon to protect her patients if necessary, she knew that this is what service in Afghanistan was like. It was as much part of the job as helping comrades and Afghans alike as part of an emergency military ambulance team.

"At the beginning, in 2002, it was a completely satisfying job," she says. "Each moment made me think that we were doing something meaningful there. Just being there symbolized to the people that there was peace and that we would ensure that it remained that way, through our medical and humanitarian work there."

Suicide attack changes everything

But the positive feelings did not endure. The situation changed dramatically with a suicide attack on a bus carrying German soldiers in June 2003. Six Bundeswehr troops were killed and 29 were injured, some seriously. Heike Groos was one of the first on the scene; she bandaged wounds, called for assistance, coordinated the medical efforts, comforted the injured and watched comrades die. The event and the huge shock changed her and her colleagues' lives forever.

"After that first suicide attack in June 2003, we changed and we became deeply, deeply distrustful because we could not at all differentiate between the people," she says. "Who is Taliban and who is not, who is good and who is bad? That was never clear to me."

As well as suspicion and caution, Heike Groos says she felt rage; rage against the Taliban who had carried out the attack, rage against Afghanistan, and rage against Germany - the country which had sent her there. She and her comrades also withdrew from the people they were supposed to be helping.

"We withdrew ourselves and wanted nothing do to with anything Afghan," she admits. "It was because we saw those that we had come to help as those who had attacked us. This perspective shifted in time, and we recognized that those who were friendly before still were but we were always more cautious after that. I was never as trusting again."

Disillusionment leads to decision to leave

After the attack, her unit became closer, even more like a family than before. Her younger male comrades looked for comfort and assurance from the older, more experienced Heike Groos. But there was no comfort for her. Groos started to see little sense in what she was doing, confined and isolated in the base due to the increasing dangers outside. She decided that it could not go on. She returned to Afghanistan for the last time in 2007.

Groos says that people could not understand why she went back but she says she wanted to complete her service. "People looked at me like I was an alien when I walked out of our house in my uniform," she says. "I was never at home and people asked my children, 'where is your mother?' and they would say 'she is in Afghanistan'." When she returned, people would stay out of her way.

Her second husband also didn't understand and eventually he and Groos divorced. It was then that she decided that she wanted to leave everything behind and take her children to the other side of the world to start again. She and three of her five kids moved to New Zealand, as far away from Afghanistan and Germany as possible in order to find peace.

Distance doesn't end Afghanistan trauma

But Afghanistan did not release her from its grip. Groos continued to suffer from her experiences, suffering from nightmares and the inability to sleep. She was also cut off from any kind of support from her previous employer: the Bundeswehr.

"I had fulfilled my obligation (to the Bundeswehr) and I found that very hard," she says. "I wish that someone had supported me and had not left me alone, but that did not happen, and I am sad about it. They pushed me away, sent me to the army physician, to the psychiatrist who said 'you are traumatized.' And then German people said: 'You were probably not hard enough, soldiers must always be tough.'"

While things were difficult for a long while, in time they also started to get better for Heike Groos and she began dealing with her experiences in Afghanistan and working through her experiences. The result was her first book, published last year, based on her time there: 'A Beautiful Day to Die'.

Author: Melanie Riedel/nda
Editor: Rob Mudge