From Soldier to Surgeon: Green Beret finds his way to UNC classrooms

Under Taliban fire, falling out of the sky and crashing into the village below, Staff Sergeant Karl Holt knew his life would never be the same again. 

Faced with countless surgeries after the attack, Holt recognized that his time as a Green Beret was over — but he could now become a surgeon. 

Holt trained at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina to become a medic within the Green Berets and recounts the training as long and challenging.

“One of the reasons why I love medicine – there’s no absolutely no shortcuts and it doesn’t matter what you did before, really I mean there’s no corners that can be cut – you have to do everything that everybody else has to do,” Holt said.

Holt knew he wanted to go into medicine after a friend of his, who was a cop in Houston, Texas, got shot and was saved by an army surgeon at the hospital.

“He was really bad off, you know. I think they had him in a coma for about two months and they literally saved him," Holt said. "It was just insane that he even survived at all and it was a surgeon that did it – in fact, an army guy."

His time in the hospital, along with his friend's experience, that made him realize it was time to follow his longtime goal of becoming a surgeon. 

Holt’s expertise from serving as a special forces medic is highly valued by the UNC School of Medicine.The school is now trying to recruit more veterans into their Physicians Assistant (PA) program, which Holt continually provides advice on.

Executive Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Director of the UNC Craniofacial Center, Amelia Drake, worked with Holt on developing a plan for the recruitment of returning special forces medics.

“Clearly he has a maturity, a sense of leadership and an understanding of the relevance of what he’s learning way beyond his years or his peers,” Drake said.

Drake said one of the first and best PA programs started at Duke University after the Vietnam War, but the program has now moved away from recruiting veterans to generally recruiting high achievers in the classroom.

“We felt like with all the returning veterans now from the Iraq and the Afghanistan that we had an opportunity to ... open a program that would appeal to those veterans,” Drake said.

Holt’s wife, Christine Guel, said that she is very proud of his work ethic and determination, even though at times balancing all the work can be extremely tough, especially while raising children.

“He has remained positive the whole process," Guel said. "You could go easily the other way, but he is the most positive person I have ever met, all things considered, and he’s a true inspiration."

Holt is extremely grateful to UNC and for the opportunity to become a general surgeon with the hopes of becoming a critical care trauma surgeon. He is now studying in the M.D. program at UNC but is still having to deal with surgeries from the attack eight years ago.

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