Well-known American surgeon killed in Iraq

Mortar round explodes near his living quarters on Christmas Day

updated 12:07 a.m. ET, Sat., Dec. 27, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. - A prominent New Jersey doctor has been killed in Iraq, the Defense Department said Friday.

Maj. John P. Pryor was a well-known trauma surgeon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. According to the Pentagon, Pryor died Christmas Day when a mortar round hit near his living quarters.

Pryor's colleagues say they're devastated by the loss of the New York City native. Pryor, who was 42, was a married father of three.

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John Pryor, doctor killed in Iraq, wrote about crime; Words of John Pryor, trauma surgeon killed in Iraq

BY MATTHEW CHAYES |matthew.chayes@newsday.com
December 28, 2008

A New Jersey trauma surgeon for a Queens-based Army medical unit who had written achingly of telling crime victims' relatives that their loved ones had died has been killed in Iraq, the Department of Defense said.

Dr. John P. Pryor, 42, of Moorestown, N.J., died on Christmas when a mortar round struck near his living quarters in Mosul, officials said. He was serving in Iraq with the Army's First Medical Detachment, based at Fort Totten.

The Army Reserve major had served at least two tours in Iraq. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he rushed to Manhattan to treat the injured.

As director of the trauma center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Pryor once likened his experiences treating Philadelphia's casualties of street violence to his time in Iraq trying to save "mascals" - mass-casualty situations - as an Army surgeon.

"In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies," Pryor wrote in an August 2007 article published in The Washington Post. "Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one."

"More young men are killed each day on the streets of America than on the worst days of carnage and loss in Iraq," he wrote. "There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa."

He and his wife, Carmela Calvo, a pediatrician at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, have two sons and a daughter; the Star-Ledger of Newark said they were 4, 8 and 10.

Pryor began helping others as a teenager. "Since an early age, Dr. Pryor was involved in the care of the sick and injured," Pryor wrote of himself in an undated document left with family, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In the document, he said he was certified in CPR when he was 14, at 17 joined an ambulance corps in Clifton Park, about 15 miles north of Albany, and became a New York State emergency medical technician at 18.

The statement added that it was "emotionally very challenging" to balance his dedication to family and country. "He hopes and prays for forgiveness from his family and colleagues," he wrote.

Pryor had served a tour as a trauma surgeon for the 344th Combat Support Hospital in Iraq in 2006 with the Fort Totten-based Forward Surgical Team this year, according to his profile on the hospital's Web site and the Defense Department.

He received his medical school training at the University at Buffalo and completed a fellowship at Penn, the hospital profile says.

In The Washington Post article about his treatment of crime victims in Philadelphia, Pryor recounted how he told parents about the death of their children.

"They will look at me with tears welling up, their knees weak, and lean forward while watching my lips, bracing for news about their loved one," Pryor wrote.

"My announcement will be short and firm, the intonation polished from years of practice. The words will be simple for me to say, but sharp as a sword for them to hear: 'I am sorry, your son has died.'"

In addition to his wife, Pryor is survived by his daughter, Danielle; sons, Francis and John Jr.; brother, Richard Pryor; and parents, Richard C. and Victoria Pryor of Florida, according to news reports.



IN HIS OWN WORDS

In an August 2007 article published in The Washington Post, trauma surgeon Dr. John P. Pryor compares emergency room work in a Philadelphia hospital with "mascals," or mass-casualty situations, that he faced at a combat hospital in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, in 2006. Some excerpts:



"In Iraq, ironically, I found myself drawing on my experience as a civilian trauma surgeon each time mascals would overrun the combat hospital. As nine or 10 patients from a firefight rolled in, I sometimes caught myself saying "just like another Friday night in West Philadelphia."



"The wounds and nationalities of the patients are different, but the feelings of helplessness, despair and loss are the same. In Iraq, soldiers die for freedom, for honor, for their country and for their buddies. Here in Philadelphia, they die without honor, without purpose, for no country, for no one ... There is a war at home raging every day, filling our trauma centers with so many wounded children that it sometimes makes Baghdad seem like a quiet city in Iowa."



"Unlike the Iraq conflict, this war is not on the front pages of The [Washington] Post or CNN. ... I am sure you have not heard about the 'Lex Street massacre,' in which 10 people ages 15 to 56 were lined up and shot, execution-style, in the winter of 2000. Seven were killed, three critically injured. You haven't heard about this tragedy because it happened to inner-city poor people in a crack house in Philadelphia."