‘So young, so brave’: St. David’s Book Club welcomes guest author Col. Luz

Jen Cowart
Posted 10/29/14

Col. Susan Luz, the highest-ranking soldier in the 399th Combat Support Hospital, an Army Reserve unit based out of Massachusetts, visited the St. David’s on the Hill book club in Cranston on Oct. …

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‘So young, so brave’: St. David’s Book Club welcomes guest author Col. Luz

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Col. Susan Luz, the highest-ranking soldier in the 399th Combat Support Hospital, an Army Reserve unit based out of Massachusetts, visited the St. David’s on the Hill book club in Cranston on Oct. 2.

The club, now in its 10th year, read Luz’s book co-authored with Marcus Brotherton, “The Nightingale of Mosul: A Nurse’s Journey of Service, Struggle and War,” for their most recent selection. According to her book, Luz, a community health nurse, is a Rhode Island native and received the Bronze Star for meritorious service while in Iraq. Luz’s own father was a World War II veteran who served under George S. Patton, and her father-in-law is George Luz Sr., who was portrayed by actor Rick Gomez in the HBO miniseries, “Band of Brothers.”

Luz began her presentation with a video slideshow, which provided the members of the club and other guests from the community who had come to hear her speak with visual images of what life was like on the base. The photos had been submitted by many of the people she worked with during her tour of duty as an Army nurse. Many of the photos showed daily life of the soldiers, including celebratory times like Halloween and Christmas, but many also the wounded and daily life inside the emergency room.

“We carried weapons. I had a 9mm and I knew how to use it, but I always prayed I’d never have to use it. We guarded our hospital and our patients. We took care of all soldiers – Iraqi, American, civilians, even terrorists,” Luz said. “We have to take care of everybody. One of our patients was a wounded German shepherd. I asked ‘Why are we treating him,’ and I was told, ‘He’s a soldier, too.”

As Luz narrated parts of the video, she referred to the photos scattered throughout of fashion shows and holiday celebrations.

“You had to celebrate everything or you’d get depressed,” she said. “This was your second home, your second family. I always made the women do fun things, like wear lipstick or get their nails done, to keep things a little bit light and fun.”

Luz showed photos of tributes paid to soldiers who had died from their injuries.

“Whenever we lost a soldier, we always paid tribute to them,” she said. “We always gave them a salute when they went back home.”

She spoke of some of the effects of the war on the soldiers who returned home.

“Similar to Vietnam, a lot of people came back with effects as they did from Agent Orange. There were a lot of sandstorms there, a lot of smoke and bombs. Two of our soldiers who came back committed suicide. They were fine over there, but when they returned here they had issues with post-traumatic stress disorder, drugs, alcohol, homelessness and mental illness. Our interpreter was later killed after I’d left. He was purposely killed,” she said.

She showed photos of friends still on active duty.

“Even though I’m now retired from the Army, many of my friends are still in the military and many have gone back for another tour or are going to places like Africa to deal with the Ebola outbreak.”

When the video slideshow ended, Luz read aloud a speech she’d brought along with her, thanking all of her fellow veterans, citing several she saw in the room that evening who had served. She read aloud, “I Am a Veteran” by Andrea C. Brett. She spoke about the effects that her tour of duty had on her personally.

“I came home a changed person,” she said. “That first time I heard the announcement, ‘Bunkers, bunkers, get to your bunkers,’ I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I heard the crackle of the loud speaker and I knew this was the real thing.”

As a young adult finishing her nursing degree at the University of Rhode Island, Luz knew she wanted to be in the military, and she details for her readers the decision-making process she went through when her father forbade her from joining.

“Instead, I decided to become a Peace Corps volunteer and I went to Brazil,” she said.

There, Luz endured horrible violence and spent many months in the hospital recovering. She was unable to have children, due to the violence she’d endured there. She later fulfilled her dream and joined the Army.

“At age 33, I was commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I knew then that my father hadn’t wanted me to see the horrors he’d seen,” she said. “A lot of young kids were enlisted with us, a lot who were just 18 or 19 and so young, so brave. I was a damn good officer; I took good care of my troops. I always felt like I had to speak up for them.”

When asked by a guest about the effect that the war had on her faith, Luz answered that it was God and her faith that kept her going through the war.

“I’m a Catholic. I went to St. Mary’s Academy - Bay View, and my faith is what got me through. I believed that God would get me through this,” Luz said. “They always say, ‘There’s no atheists in a foxhole.’ We prayed a lot.”

St. David’s on the Hill parishioner Wanda Jablonski praised Luz and her personal strength.

“I am in awe of your inner strength, going through all that you went through. You came back, and now you help so many others,” Jablonski said.

Luz, who works with adolescents in her capacity as a full-time civilian nurse now, believes that she was always meant to serve.

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she said. “I always said to my troops, ‘We’re together through it all.’”

All of the proceeds from her book, “The Nightingale of Mosul,” go to charity, specifically The Wounded Warrior Project.

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