Richard Charleston had just finished his residency when the Great War broke out. In lieu of starting his work in earnest, he enlisted like any good, red-blooded son of America and freedom. He was a bit older than an ideal recruit and lacked the physical abilities typically desired, but his medical training more than made up for that. Though he learned to shoot like anyone else in basic training, out in the field when he wasn't tending to the injured he was essentially a glorified chauffeur for the officers.
He thought his residency had prepared him for the blood and gore of battle. He was wrong. Like many of his fellow recruits, where he was promised glory and honor, he found only death and disease. He witnessed the horrendous effects of a new invention called mustard gas and had to amputate far more limbs due to trench foot than wounds from the enemy.
In many way, he was one of the lucky ones. He came home intact without any signs of shell shock or battle fatigue. The war's psychological toll only expressed itself later when he went to perform his first operation and went into a long tirade about the unsanitary conditions he was working in, images of the filthy trenches and gangrenous limbs dancing before his vision. That's when it was quietly suggested that the "War Hero" perhaps switch to a less...hands on branch of medicine.
He went back to studying and was quickly able to pick up the new and quickly evolving field of psychology. In his search for his next position, that's when an old war buddy managed to put him in touch with Anthony Carmichael, who as it happened was in the market for a new family doctor.
