During his first deployment as a U.S. Army battalion surgeon in Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm in the fall of 1990, José A. Stoute spent his first months in a state of chronic, constant emotional and physical tension.
The scenario was tenuous. In this early part of the campaign—the ground war had yet to begin—and Saddam Hussein’s threat of using chemical weapons was a major concern for medical personnel like Stoute, who would need to treat any who were exposed. Every night, commanders briefed the U.S. troops and showed maps of the enemy’s position.
“We were just a skeleton army, and it was a huge imbalance. We were facing hundreds of tanks from Saddam’s army and making contingency plans to defend basically to the last man,” Stoute remembered.
But it was in his second tour, in 2003 during the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that the full impact of war’s horrors was felt. He was in a leadership position, serving as a colonel and deputy commander for the 47th Combat Support Hospital in Mosul, in northern Iraq.
“We were losing 30 to 60 soldiers a month. We were operating this hospital and seeing lots of trauma, and the scenario was even more dangerous because the enemy was not just in front of you; they were all around us,” Stoute said.
This time, his medical efforts included helping the wounded, friend and foe alike.
“I’m not a surgeon, but it was a surgical hospital. Our mission was to support soldiers, but we took in everyone who was wounded—the enemy included—and tried to save lives and support as much as we could.”
Upon leaving Iraq, he remembered meeting and shaking the hand of a young physician who was incoming to Iraq in a leadership position. A few days later, back in the States, he learned that the physician’s helicopter had been shot down and that 11 medical personnel had died.
As the United States celebrates and remembers fallen soldiers on Memorial Day on Monday, Stoute recalled how experiencing the loss of lives never really leaves you.
“I saw too many young soldiers in our emergency room that affected me more than I thought it would,” Stoute said. “And the deaths of this physician and the others, I carry it all in a way I cannot forget. To say the least, it affects you. It’s like looking at a brother or sister that you have lost.”
Stoute was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the middle of three children. His father served in the U.S. Air Force, and his mother was a nurse. They met in England, and Stoute’s birth in North Carolina occurred while his father was completing paperwork there to retire from the military. Within a month, the family moved to Panama, his father’s homeland.
As a child growing up in Panama, Stoute remembered being very accident-prone and, on multiple occasions, ending up in the emergency room where his mother worked. Those experiences gave him great appreciation for the healing power of medicine.
He developed an early appreciation, too, for those in the military. He lived near the Panama Canal Zone and often saw U.S. officers in their uniforms. Though his father didn’t share much about his military memories—years later, Stoute tried to research more but found that a warehouse fire in St. Louis had destroyed all his father’s records—he still held an admiration for his father’s service.
By 16, Stoute had already graduated high school. He came to South Florida to live with his aunt who was married to a retired Army colonel, a veteran of World War II.
“He had fought in the Pacific campaign and showed me pictures. I was really impacted and had great admiration for what he’d done. That admiration was in the back of mind when I got into medical school, and I thought, ‘Well, this is my opportunity to get into this great organization—and they’ll even pay for my tuition—so that’s how I joined,” Stoute recalled.
He studied first at Miami Dade College, then went to the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in biology.
He returned to Miami and began his medical degree studies at the University of Miami, financially supported by his military scholarship. He described those four years studying and living in Miami as “magical.”
“I was like a sponge learning all these new things and meeting great people, great professors. The vibrancy and enthusiasm at Jackson Hospital with all the eager UM students was incredible,” Stoute said. “Despite the hard work, the challenges, and the academic rigor, it was an amazing experience. I still have many friends, fellow students from my time there.”
As a member of the army reserves, Stoute was required every summer to do a rotation on an Army base. For his fourth-year rotation, he was assigned to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he was introduced to the study of infectious diseases—an area that would become his medical specialization.
After he graduated from the Miller School of Medicine in 1985, he completed residency in Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, then entered the military full-time. He was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas for three years when Desert Storm broke out.
After serving that first time in Iraq, he remembered the feeling of coming home.
“You appreciate every molecule that you breathe in freedom, walking down the street, petting your dog—it’s an amazing feeling coming back,” Stoute said.
After his first deployment in Iraq, Stoute returned to Walter Reed for a three-year fellowship. His training involved working on malaria vaccines and leading trials, including two years of clinical and one year of research, preparing for the next phase of his career.
From 1997 to 2003, he was stationed in the coastal town of Kisumu, Kenya, near Lake Victoria, the largest of all the African lakes. He spent those years field-testing the efficacy of the vaccines and drugs and studying malaria in children.
Stoute was awarded a bronze star during his military service. After retiring from the military in 2008, he continued to do malaria research and taught for 15 years at Penn State College of Medicine. In 2019 he returned to Miami to care for his elderly mother and to pursue a second degree at the University. In 2023 he earned an M.F.A. in motion pictures from the School of Communication.
As part of his degree, Stoute wrote and directed a full-length feature film, “St. Vierja Academy,” a semi-autobiographical story about his high school years at an elite, rigorous private Catholic school for boys in Panama.
“I had a scholarship to attend because my parents never could have afforded it. When I got there, I was faced with kids from a much higher socioeconomic level, so the movie deals with that and other issues of abuse,” said Stoute, who currently serves as associate chief of staff for a VA medical center in Jackson, Mississippi. “It also has a message about acceptance of who you are, not pretending to be someone else, and of achieving your goals despite obstacles.”
A full-length interview of Stoute’s personal history and military career, conducted by Patrick Russell as part of the Making History Project, a Florida nonprofit organization that maintains oral histories of veterans, is available.