Veteran of a Foreign War: From Foxhole to Physician

A personal Narrative about a second generation Italian-American growing up on the mean streets of New York. Fortunate to receive a scholarship and excellent education at Hofstra University, he travels Germany and other parts of Europe while studying languages at the Goethe Institute. Back in New York in the late 1960s, he faces down Vietnam War protestors, takes a commission as a lieutenant of infantry, and leads a platoon in combat in Vietnam and Cambodia. That experience; one of bloodshed and terror, motivates Dr. Candela to study medicine and attempt to relieve as much of human suffering that he can. Denied admission to American medical schools through some archaic selection processes, he travels to Mexico and pursues his medical education there. The poor conditions of the people of Mexico, contrasted against the privileges of the elite in that society, appall Dr. Candela. He contributes his time and growing medical knowledge to the poorest, thereby gaining invaluable experience that most young doctors never see. He finishes at the top of his class and arrives back in New York, serving in some of the busiest hospital emergency rooms in the country. His day to day episodes involve treating heart attacks, drug overdoses, gunshot wounds, beatings, dying teenagers and just about any medical condition brought about by violence and poverty. This is an inspirational story of how one man, faced with every obstacle life could throw at him, beats the odds, serves his country and society, and is today, a highly successful orthopedic surgeon in North Carolina. Dr. Candela provides a look at Europe during the height of the Cold War, then an extraordinarily vivid account of combat in Vietnam, and finally the battles he fought through medical school and the chaos of big city hospitals of New York.