Purely in Love with My Uniform: What Military Medicine Taught Me About Service

 

When I entered the world of medicine, I imagined that my professional life would be defined by patients, hospital wards, clinical decisions and perhaps, with time, a postgraduate qualification. I never thought that medicine would one day take me into operational areas, teach me lessons in leadership, place me alongside soldiers in difficult circumstances, and eventually make me responsible not merely for individual patients but also for aspects of a healthcare system. Looking back after more than two decades in uniform, I sometimes wonder whether I chose this journey or whether, in some quiet way, it had begun choosing me much earlier. As a seven-year-old boy, my role model was not a film star or a fictional superhero. It was my maternal uncle, a soldier of 5 Rajput Regiment and a veteran of Operation Pawan. I listened with fascination to his stories of military service, particularly his experiences after the mandatory commando training at Belagavi. To a young boy, these were stories of courage and adventure. Only much later did I understand the deeper qualities behind them—discipline, endurance and a sense of purpose.

Life, however, first took me towards medicine. Like thousands of young doctors, I spent years studying, working in hospitals and thinking about the conventional milestones of a medical career. I believed my future would unfold within hospital corridors. The final push towards the Armed Forces came from my father. Perhaps he recognised something in me that I had not fully recognised myself. He encouraged me to explore the Armed Forces Medical Services and helped me initiate my application for a Short Service Commission. When the call eventually came, another journey began. I still remember the significance of wearing the olive-green uniform for the first time. The stethoscope around my neck had not changed, but somehow its meaning had. I was still a doctor, but medicine now carried an additional responsibility—to care for those who had accepted the responsibility of defending the nation. Initially, I thought of myself simply as a doctor in uniform. It took the Army to teach me the difference between a doctor in uniform and a doctor-officer.

Medical college had taught me anatomy, physiology, pathology and finally clinical medicine as well as surgery. Military life began teaching me things that were more difficult to find in textbooks: accountability, teamwork, adaptability, composure and leadership. The real classroom, however, came during my first posting, with a Rashtriya Rifles unit in Jammu and Kashmir. Within the first few months, a soldier was brought to our medical facility late at night with a gunshot injury involving his index finger. The situation required immediate assessment and intervention. My earlier exposure to surgery and orthopedics helped me stabilise him before evacuation to a higher medical centre. A few weeks later, another soldier arrived with a bullet injury to his thigh. Again, resources were limited and decisions had to be made quickly. Those incidents taught me something that has stayed with me ever since: confidence during an emergency is rarely created in the moment of crisis. It is built quietly through preparation long before the crisis arrives. Yet one of my most valuable lessons from that tenure came not from something I did correctly, but from a mistake. We once received information about two suspected poisoning cases at a company location several kilometres away. An ambulance was prepared and we moved immediately. Somewhere along the route, uncertainty about the direction resulted in a wrong turn. By the time we could have reached the location, the casualties had already been evacuated by helicopter. I returned expecting criticism. My Commanding Officer did something far more useful. He explained that in an operational environment, knowing medicine was not enough. I also needed to know the terrain. I was subsequently made to physically familiarise myself with company locations and routes. What initially felt like corrective action became an enduring lesson in leadership. A good leader does not merely identify a mistake; he converts it into learning.

The Army also gave me teachers who never entered a medical college. One of them was an infantry officer and company commander in the Rashtriya Rifles Battalion with which I served. He was physically fit, disciplined and professionally demanding, but what impressed me equally was his intellectual curiosity and composure. During one operational movement, our team had to cross a fast-flowing mountain stream. We negotiated it methodically, each person supporting the one ahead. On another occasion, I watched his calm handling of a dangerous situation involving the evacuation of a civilian doctor. Such experiences gradually changed my understanding of leadership. Authority may come with rank and appointment. Leadership does not. Leadership has to be earned through competence, conduct and the confidence one creates in others. Soldiers themselves became some of my greatest teachers. Medical textbooks teach disease. Hospitals teach treatment. Soldiers often teach character.

I saw men continue their duties despite difficult terrain, extreme weather, prolonged separation from their families and operational uncertainty. Their resilience was humbling. It also made me understand that courage is not always dramatic. Sometimes courage is simply continuing to do one's duty when circumstances are difficult and nobody is watching. Above all, soldiers taught me the meaning of trust. A soldier who approaches his medical officer when ill or injured brings more than a clinical problem. He brings the expectation that someone will know what to do. That trust places a responsibility on the doctor that cannot be captured entirely in case sheets, statistics or reports. Over the years, my postings changed. Operational medicine gave way at different times to military hospitals, administrative responsibilities and eventually veteran healthcare. The nature of my work changed with it. In the Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme, I began looking at healthcare from an entirely different perspective. Instead of examining only an individual patient, I sometimes found myself examining patterns in healthcare data—unusual expenditure, admission patterns or other variations that might require closer scrutiny. For a doctor trained in diagnosis, the similarity was striking. A symptom does not prove a disease; it tells us where to look more carefully. In the same way, an unusual data pattern does not establish wrongdoing. It raises a question. I learnt to apply a familiar medical principle to administration: observe carefully, analyse objectively and never confuse suspicion with proof. The uniform had first taught me to care for individual patients. Years later, it was teaching me that professional responsibility could also mean protecting the integrity of a healthcare system. Working with veterans added another dimension. A veteran may have removed his uniform years ago, but his relationship with the institution does not disappear with retirement. Behind every beneficiary is a history of service, separation, hardship and sacrifice. For many veterans, military healthcare represents a continuation of the trust they once placed in the organisation while serving. That deserves to be treated with dignity. These experiences have also made me think about young doctors deciding what to do with their lives. Military medicine should never be romanticized. Uniformed service involves difficult postings, separation, mobility, uncertainty and occasions when personal convenience must give way to organisational requirements. It is certainly not a career for everyone. But neither should it be seen merely as another employment option for a medical graduate. Few medical careers allow a doctor to move so naturally between clinical medicine, operational environments, leadership, administration, preventive healthcare and the care of veterans. Fewer still make leadership an expectation so early in professional life. A young doctor entering the Armed Forces may believe that medicine will define his identity. Slowly, almost without noticing it, the uniform adds other dimensions—responsibility, resilience, accountability and a larger sense of service. That is what happened to me. I entered the Armed Forces as a doctor who happened to wear a uniform. Somewhere along the journey, I became a doctor-officer. The distinction may appear small. To me, it represents more than two decades of learning. Military service has not made me a better doctor than colleagues practising elsewhere. Civilian doctors serve society every day under demanding circumstances, and every branch of medicine has its own challenges and purpose. The uniform simply placed me in different circumstances and gave me responsibilities I had never imagined when I first entered medical college. Some lessons came from patients. Some came from soldiers. Some came from senior officers. A few came from my own mistakes. And many came simply from years of accepting responsibility and learning from it. Today, when I look at the olive-green uniform, I no longer see merely the uniform I was once excited to wear.

 I see the seven-year-old boy listening to his uncle's stories.

I see the young doctor beginning an uncertain military career.

I see soldiers brought into a medical room in the middle of the night.

I see a wrong road in Kashmir that eventually taught me the right lesson.

I see commanders who demonstrated that leadership is not about how loudly one gives orders, but how much confidence one's presence creates.

I see military families, hospitals and veterans who reminded me that healthcare is ultimately built on trust.

And I see a profession that gradually became something larger than the career I had originally imagined. Medicine gave me the ability to heal. The Army taught me responsibility. Soldiers taught me resilience. Leadership taught me accountability. And the uniform brought all of them together into a sense of purpose.

Perhaps that is why, after more than two decades, I remain “purely in love with my uniform”.

Not because the journey has always been easy, but because of what the journey has made of me.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation to which he belongs.