'Making the team better': 1st SFAB builds readiness with integral medical training

By Sgt. Joseph TruckleyOctober 31, 2017

'Making the team better': 1st SFAB builds readiness with integral medical training
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'Making the team better': 1st SFAB builds readiness with integral medical training
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'Making the team better': 1st SFAB builds readiness with integral medical training
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'Making the team better': 1st SFAB builds readiness with integral medical training
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FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Soldiers from the 815th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade went through a series of scenario training events at Selby Hill Combined Arms Collective Training Facility at Fort Benning, Georgia, Oct. 24, 2017.

The scenario training included medical and casualty evacuation within a village, where the Soldiers worked together with local leaders of the village to de-escalate a simulated hostile situation and successfully transport simulated casualties out of harm's way.

Soldiers reacted to contact and provided security around the perimeter of simulated casualties. They provided first aid by applying tourniquets to stop bleeding and applied pressure dressings. They then called in a nine-line medevac request to pick up the causalities.

The Soldiers then transported the casualties out of the hostile area using a litter carry, where they loaded them in a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protective vehicle so they could be transported to get further medical attention.

Most of the Soldiers are not medics, however they used the advanced first aid training skills they learned in brigade combat team trauma training, known as BCT3. BCT3 is a combat medic course that all 1st SFAB Soldiers, regardless of specialty, complete.

"The training scenario starts off as a walk to advise mission, with the teams communicating and working with the local police of a small town, and then turns into a medical lane dealing with an improvised explosive device attack with multiple causalities and forces teams to react to those casualties," said Maj. Charles Comfort, 815th BEB executive officer.

"This is the time when the teams establish troop leading procedures and start building the continuity of those teams," he said.

The training is designed to prepare the teams for a potential deployment.

"This exercise will prepare us for working as small teams; working on advisory skills with foreign security forces; integrating our security forces and figuring out proper tactics, techniques and procedures," said Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Lococo, 815th BEB.

"The significance of the training is to enable us the ability to identify fundamental weakness of working in small groups," said Lococo. "Senior experienced leaders help the process, and they are able to self-identify any individual weakness that their team may have."

"It is all about making the team better," he said.

The 1st SFAB is the first brigade to be specifically built to help combatant commanders accomplish theater security objectives by training, advising, assisting, accompanying and enabling foreign security force partners.

For more information about volunteering for 1st SFAB, Soldiers should contact their branch manager.

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