Near death

This book is a genuine diary of the outstanding Soviet surgeon Alexander Alexandrovich Vishnevsky, written in the conditions of frontline life during the Great Patriotic War. It is not a literary novel, but an honest, restrained and at the same time piercing document recording the real work of a military doctor, day after day facing wounds, pain, death and hope.
The pages of the diary show the daily life of the surgical service under fire: descriptions of the most severe wounds, the most complex operations, shortages of dressings, night shifts, evacuations, defeats and rescues. Vishnevsky records everything from the state of frontline hospitals and decisions of the military command to his own physical and moral exhaustion. But even in the darkest episodes, a clear, medical tone is preserved, in which duty is more important than emotions. A separate theme is the reflection on the fate of a wounded soldier, on cowardice and courage, on the responsibility of a surgeon, as well as on the limitations and possibilities of medicine in war. Through laconic, sometimes almost dry notes, the scale of the tragedy emerges, in which human life literally hangs on the tip of a scalpel.