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22-Year-Old Medical Student Witnesses World War I's Horrors In 'The Winter Soldier'

In author Daniel Mason's new book, a barely trained Polish medical student is deployed to tend to wounded soldiers in a dismal field station in the frozen Carpathian Mountains.
"The Winter Soldier," by Daniel Mason. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

Author and physician Daniel Mason‘s new book “The Winter Soldier” is a vivid historical fiction about a privileged 22-year-old Polish medical student who is deployed to treat critically wounded patients in a remote World War I field station in the Carpathian Mountains.

Here & Now‘s Robin Young talks with Mason about the book, which traces the just-emerging field of medicine and the slow understanding of war’s psychological toll on soldiers.

Book Excerpt: ‘The Winter Soldier’

by Daniel Mason

But of all the cases he studied, it was the

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