PABRADE, Lithuania – “You have a 30-year-old active-duty infantryman lying on the ground. He’s been hit by a land mine,” said Capt. Matteson McCarty, 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment’s physician assistant. “You are under direct enemy fire. Your time starts now.”
“Battle buddy, can you move to cover,” shouted Pfc. Timothy Correa to a motionless body lying in front of him. “Battle buddy, can you return fire, render self-aid?”
The Trooper did not respond.
Correa, a combat medic specialist assigned to Alpha “Animal” Company, rushed forward to the fallen comrade, ready to use his skills to do what he can to save the fallen Trooper’s life.
“Today we are conducting Tactical Combat Casualty Care to ensure the validation of all of our medics to assess and treat battlefield casualties,” McCarty said. “They run through their algorithms to treat the most common preventable causes of death on the battlefield.”
Approximately 19 Troopers from across 2-8 Cav. Reg. participated in the training Jan. 30, 2021, to identify their strengths and weaknesses within the wide arena of battlefield medicine. Each medic was allotted 30 minutes to assess their mock casualty who presented with several injuries to include a sucking chest wound, limb amputation, blast injury, tension pneumothorax, and obstructed airway to name a few.
“It was nerve-racking,” Correa said. “This is an opportunity for me to brush up on anything I’m missing and have that one-on-one feedback from the physician assistant and platoon sergeant. It’s good to be as prepared as possible for anything that happens [to someone].”
“There are a few things we need to tweak, but so far everyone is doing really well,” said Staff Sgt. Ryan Waldo, treatment noncommissioned officer in charge at the battalion’s aid station. “This helps create muscle reactions, so in a firefight, they can react and save a life.”
As the medics completed their timed training, their casualties were played by volunteer Troopers with names and faces the medic recognized. The volunteer casualties provided additional stress to further assist the medics with achieving the muscle memory Waldo spoke about.
In a resource-constricted environment like the Pabrade Training Area, Lithuania, measures must be taken to maximize efficiency and control consumption rates. While this proved a challenge in planning life-like training, volunteers filled a crucial role.
Volunteers allowed the medics to provide actual treatments such as needle sticks, nasal pharyngeal tube placement and bandaging.
“Thank you to all of our volunteers,” Waldo said. “If you are always notionalizing things like this, you never get the actual training. We train as we fight.”
Waldo and his staff took a week to organize and resource the training, volunteers, trainers, and observers.
“I appreciate our volunteers, they gave us valuable experience so we can do our jobs,” Waldo said. “It helps our medics to be the best of the best.”
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