Combat casualty surgery is something most people know about only from what they see in movies or TV shows, but for locally-raised Capt. Amanda Johnston of the U.S. Army, it was part of an assignment that changed her life during her deployment to Afghanistan in 2013.
Johnston worked as a trauma nurse in Afghanistan with the 758th Forward Surgical Team, where her team would be the first point of surgical contact for combat casualties from the field.
Johnston was actually wounded during her deployment in Nov. 2013, and she noted she was one of the "very, very small number of wounded nurses in Afghanistan/Iraq."
The daughter of Jack and Cindy Preston of Wapakoneta, Johnston was a 2005 graduate of Wapakoneta High School and lived in Wapakoneta for several years. She considers Wapakoneta her hometown, she said, and much of her family lives in the area.
See Wednesday's print edition of the Wapakoneta Daily News for the full story.