He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

Ft Lewis, WA

We've just had three days of training of various utility.  Actually, I could probably say at this point, we've just had 20 days of training of various utility.  But the past week did have some high points.  Our group of Navy folks split into two camps: the first half, primarily those heading to FOB Farah (Forward Operating Base in Farah, western Afghanistan), went to HUMVEE driver training.   These people received 40 total hours of training on how to drive a HUMVEE in various conditions to include actual 4-wheel drive ranges, nighttime with night vision goggles, and so on.  The week culminated in washing the HUMVEEs.  Can't run them through the base car wash you know...

The rest of us went to a course called "Tactical Combat Casualty Care," or TC3.  Sounds pretty high speed.  It did have value and was taught well.  The whole thrust of the course was to impart the sense of battlefield urgency when it comes to dealing with a soldier with a casualty, be it an IED blast or a sniper round.  The theme might have been "you don't take the hospital out to the battlefield," you "snatch and grab" the patient with the casualty and get him or her to a safer place, stop the bleeding, then get them to the next echelon of care.

The course began with an eye-opening video.  It was live footage of a convoy whose soldiers had just debarked from their vehicles.  The videographer captured up close and personal a soldier who had gotten a sniper round to the region of his upper thigh or lower buttocks.  You heard the 'crack' of the weapon in the distance followed by an "I'm shot!" from the soldier.  He went to the ground and then the chaos began.  The soldier was dragged to safety and then there was a time period of no first aid care that seemed to go on forever.  We learned later that it was all of 48 seconds.

During that time you could see and here the chaos of battle - multiple shots fired, shaky close-ups of soldiers whose faces barely masked the terror of possibly being sniped themselves.  At one point one of the soldiers began screaming "Medic! Medic!"  The casualty victim, who was beginning to show evidence of mental slowing consistent with shock managed to mumble "There is no f*king medic!"  That was the point.  YOU are the medic.  With the shortage of available personnel, we were told, many convoys deploy without a medic designated - or perhaps the medic gets wounded.  Snatch and grab, stop bleeding, take care of what you can take care of - quickly - and get the casualty to safety.  Eye opening, for sure.  Once that eternal 48 seconds had elapsed, one of the soldiers ripped off his flak jacket and several units of congealed blood underneath was covering the exit wound.  Fortunately the casualty victim survived.  I may have even cared for him at Walter Reed during my training as he had a semi-unusual name which I recognized.

During TC3 we learned - more appropriately, refamiliarized ourselves since most were doctors and nurses - tourniquet application, stretcher bearing, various snatch and grab techniques ranging from grabbing the casualty by the handle of his/her flak jacket to the fireman's carry, and so on.  We all got to do these carries with our buddies.  Some "buddies" weigh more than others.

On the second day of training we got to put everything together and run a battlefield simulated drill complete with sounds of gun fire, yelling of obscenities, and other various noises - all being pumped in at high decibel levels while we dragged around casualty victims, some being several hundred pound dummies.  We also got to drag these victims under a barbed wire fence of about 50 feet.  I was exhausted when it was done.  We were also covered with fake blood and dirt.

Yesterday, while the HUMVEE drivers cleaned their vehicles and did more driving, the rest of us did "Army Warrior Training" which was nothing more than a hodge-podge of things we haven't covered to date.  We learned how to throw grenades and set up a Claymore mine.  We got into chemical and biological warfare gear and ran a simulated drill.  The latter was useful as we only get training on this every blue moon, and there is a chance in Afghanistan that the enemy might try to use these weapons.  Still - Claymore mines??  Really?



The Claymore Mine - make sure you point the "Front Toward Enemy."  Indeed.