During his downtime in his most recent stint in Afghanistan, Dr. Ray Wiss was able to pen the book he would have wrote in the first place, had he known the world would be reading it.
The local doctor’s first book, Fob Doc, was originally a collection of journal entries he wrote while in Afghanistan, which he planned to share with friends and family, “just to explain what I was doing and why.”
But Wiss’ diary caught the attention of some “very high ranking officers,” who suggested he turn it into a book.
After several publishers told him “to take a long walk off a short dock,” D&M Publishers Inc. took a chance on it. Fob Doc turned out be the best-selling military book in Canada last fall, but Wiss said “as happy as I was about the book doing well, the fact remained that the book was an accident.
“It was still a book about me — it’s my experiences,” he said. “It’s not the book I would have written had I know it was going to be a book, and that’s what the second one is. If the first one is a conversation between me and my friends about me, the second one is a conversation I’m hoping to have with all of Canada about all of us.”
The new book, A Line in the Sand, is set to come out in October.
“(It) is much more nitty-gritty,” he said. “It lets you know what life was like for all of us who served in Afghanistan.”
Wiss said readers will “hear the voices of these soldiers in the pages” as he retells the stories of “an entire combat team.”
Dr. Ray Wiss’s second book, A Line in the Sand, is due out this October.
Readers will get firsthand insight into everything that happens in Afghanistan. Wiss said the book discusses “incidental details” about what it’s like to go step by step with the infantry, to see the outcomes of bombings and watch people work the most unlikely jobs.
He also includes details of everyday life, like “what the food is like (and) how the dirt gets into every one of your pores.”
Wiss said he “was writing to write their stories.”
Every day Wiss was in Afghanistan, he said he spent some time writing.
“The closer you get to combat, the more boring war actually is,” he said. “The closer you are to the front lines and the fighting, the more dead time and down time there is. It’s not like in the movies — it’s not action, action, action all the time.”
He front line medic explained a lot of time is spent preparing for battle.
“If you’re the doctor, you’re not even getting ready that much for the fighting part or the killing part,” he said. “You’re waiting for the causalities to come in. You are as rehearsed as you could possibly be.”
He said writing not only helped pass the time, it also kept his mind off what was happening.
“Don’t think it’s not possible to be terrified and bored at the same time, because it really is,” he said.
In writing his book, Wiss said he wants to make people more aware of what happens in Afghanistan.
“Those of us in uniform are your brothers and sisters out there,” he said. “We are dying on your behalf, and just as significantly, we’re killing in your name. We are the ones who will bear the scars of these events on our bodies and on our souls for the rest of our lives. At the bare minimum, Canadians owe it to us to be well-informed.”
Like Fob Doc, profits from A Line in the Sand will go to the Military Families Fund.
“I didn’t go to Afghanistan to write a book, and it didn’t sit right with me to make money when some of my buddies didn’t come back,” he said.
Wiss’ book will be available at independent and major bookstores, and also online, in October.
