FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Thanks to medical evacuation training they received from C Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment (Air Ambulance) on May 26 at the Pvt. Joseph P. Martinez Combined Arms Collective Training Facility, the 539th Transportation Company is ready for the worst case-scenario.
Lt. Jason Jones, 539th, planned the training. The scenario had Soldiers on patrol in military operations on urban terrain when they came under attack. To make it as realistic as possible Jones added smoke and sounds such as simulated artillery, battlefield sounds and concussion cannons. He also added a "call to prayer" over the speaker system to intensify the circumstances. "Because in a war zone, nothing is quiet. It worked. It got their heart rate up and it made it a lot more intense," Jones said.
After the Soldiers came under attack, they had to move their wounded to the casualty collection point, call in the nine line report (which provides nine pertinent pieces of information to the flight crew including location, number of wounded, etc), set up a landing zone and move their casualties out to the UH-60A. All this was done while pulling security at the casualty collection point and landing zone and sometimes without their leadership who had been taken out in the attack.
To prepare for the training the platoons spent last week assembling landing zone kits and running different scenarios attempting to prepare for every possible scenario.
The day before the exercise, C/1-52nd taught what Jones called a "medevac 101" class. "The training we had, medevac 101, was a definite thumbs-up," he said. "It gave everyone the correct way to put Soldiers onto the birds."
Chief Warrant Officer Travis Call, the flight operations officer in charge for C/1-52nd said the purpose of the training was "to get a fundamental understanding of how the nine line process works. What it is, what it involves to get a medevac asset launched, to get it enroute to the point of injury. Just to get comfortable and confident with the medevac request."
"It was an orientation to medevac operations. We started with an academic portion, which we called medevac 101," Call said. "They learned about the format of a nine line medevac request, how to send it up, and different methods of sending it up. We talked about marking the LZ, prepping it for us to come in, what we are expecting, what they are expected to do. Then we got into packaging the patient and loading the aircraft."
"The next day we did the actual medevac training portion. Where they set up over at the CACTF and they called in nine line medevac requests via radio and we would launch and go pick them up," Call said.
Soldiers were enthusiastic about the training.
Sgt. Dale Blass said "It was awesome training".
"It was fun, I had a blast," said Sgt Robert Thomas.
Spc. Don Webb said "I thought it was the best training I have done in three years with this company. We learned a lot."
It was training for C/1-52nd as well as the 539th and Call said it went well. "They marked the LZ, called in the nine line, packaged the patient, loading up. It was really good training and we enjoyed doing it."
"I learned the rules, the information needed to get the bird in the air" said Sgt .Dontee McCray. "For the nine line, we need to get at least the first five lines in 30 seconds to get the bird in the air, the rest of the information can be while they are in the air. We also learned about the whole medevac thing, how to evaluate casualties."
Sgt. Marcus Young, who initially brought the idea of this training to Jones said he "learned what the pilots were expecting of us when they hit ground. A lot of the Soldiers have never really seen it. Some of that was totally new."
"They will now know how the bird is gonna come in. They will be more confident in giving the nine line. They will have some working knowledge on what it is supposed to look like and depending on the situation they will be able to adjust better so we can get the casualties on the bird and get the bird out of there. They have a good idea of what it is supposed to look like now," Young said.
"Working as a team is number one," Spc. Katlyn Lopez said. "As long as you have communication on the battlefield, everything will go good. If you don't have communication everything is going to get hectic, because you don't know where to go."
McCray said "As truck drivers, being out on the road we could hit an IED, or have a rollover. If we have personnel injured we have to call up a medevac . It was good training to learn how to set up the LZ, to pull security for the bird, so we can get our injured soldiers to the hospital."
"I thought it was really good training," Thomas said. "When we deploy again it won't be a shock for them to see this bird coming in. They will know what they have to do. They will know who to listen to, when to listen to them. It's really good training for the
Soldiers and the NCOs," said Thomas. "It is more pertinent to be able to save a life than to take a life"
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