JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. -- As Spc. Michael Gonzales tried to calm a dummy lying motionless on the ground, asking it questions and receiving no answers, he set the stage for a scene that might amuse the outsider.
But there's nothing funny about saving a Soldier in combat, whether it's training or real life.
And Gonzales, a medic with 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, went through every motion during a three-day exercise that pushed him and the rest of the brigade's combat medics to think under pressure -- the last chance they had to work out their kinks before deploying next month to Afghanistan.
With just weeks standing between the brigade and a combat zone, a dummy might as well be a real Soldier, for a medic.
But the stakes are even higher for Gonzales, who has never deployed.
"It's fake right now, but when you put yourself in the mindset you have to, these are really people out there," said Gonzales, who belongs to the brigade's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment. "These are my friends; these are my family, and I have to be on top of my game to get there and move."
Gonzales and his fellow medics spent March 20-22 at JBLM's Medical Simulation Training Center running through point-of-injury lanes -- training scenarios in which they traversed barbed wire-laden ground and scaled walls to provide immediate aid to casualties wounded by roadside bombs and facing simulated enemy fire.
Each team of seven medics had 30 minutes to treat a wide array of wounds, from severed extremities to head trauma, and then to transport their wounded -- 200-pound dummies -- to a landing zone for medical evacuation.
"This is brass tacks," said Spc. Jonathan Shaw, a medic with 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, observing as time quickly ticked away for two teams running through similar scenarios less than 50 feet apart. "This is as serious as it gets. If they fail, it's life or death at that point."
"We are the first line of defense for saving someone's life," said Spc. James Mercer, a medic with Gonzales's battalion and a Burleson, Texas, native. "We're going to be that person on the ground that puts that tourniquet on, seals a chest wound."
Sergeant 1st Class Rafael Sierra, the surgeon cell noncommissioned officer in charge for 2nd Brigade, said his section put together the exercise -- a final refresher -- to add one last boost of self-assurance to the medics in his brigade and iron out any shortcomings.
"This is our last opportunity to just kind of work out any hiccups and get the Soldiers' confidence up," said Sierra, a Miami native who proudly wears an expert field medical badge on his uniform -- a tangible symbol of years of hard work and dedication. "We just want to make sure the training and the skills are refreshed before they head out."
But more importantly, it was an opportunity for the brigade's more senior medics, who have deployed to combat, to serve as instructors for those who are still rather new to the Army.
Sergeant Nicholas Kelly is one of those with deployment experience.
"A lot of these guys are fresh out of Advanced Individual Training, and they haven't had the experience that some of us deployed Soldiers have had, so we try to get them in and simulate these injuries the best we can," said Kelly, a native of Avon, Ind., who deployed a couple of years ago to southern Afghanistan with 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment.
Kelly set up a small defensive base with his unit during his tour and went on foot patrols every few days. Most of what he saw included broken bones and head injuries from vehicle rollovers and IED attacks.
Then, he was just another medic; but two years down the road he's a seasoned mentor -- well versed in trauma care and trusted by his brigade to help prepare new medics for combat.
And he made it a point to pass every bit of his experience on to the medics as they ran through their lanes.
Kelly circled the groups from his battalion, yelling out and correcting their mistakes and piling on the pressure as the Soldiers franticly tore open gauze packets, wrapped up flesh wounds and scribbled vitals, names and times onto small scratch pads of paper.
"One of these guys will have to stay behind with security," said Spc. Michael Torrente, working beside Gonzales and making a swift call.
"Why are you going to leave him behind?" Kelly asked Torrente interrogatively. "You should have planned resources to carry him."
After a quick reconsider, Torrente made a figurative about face, changing his mind.
"We don't move unless we move as a unit," he said as his team members decided how they would carry three casualties to a collection point.
"I'm trying to get them to do it the way they're supposed to," Kelly said.
"It's the little stuff that they don't really interact with stateside that they're going to need to know," he said, citing tasks like applying tourniquets to injured or missing limbs and calling up evacuation reports.
"It's all about laying down the stress," he added. "I have to make sure I guide them in the right direction so they get the proper experience."
And Gonzales, who felt the pressure as much as anyone else on his team, agrees whole-heartedly.
"If you let all the stress pile up on you, you're just going to end up in a world of pain, so it's better to overwork yourself now -- get those nerves running -- so by this time all of us are ready to go," said the Tucson, Ariz., native, who has been in the Army just more than two years.
Gonzales described the training, which mirrors real-life possibilities, as scary and nerve-racking. But he knows it's crucial -- and this is crunch time.
"You can't expect an infantryman to be the best shot in the world if he doesn't fire his weapon ever, and the same goes for a medic and this craft here."
Social Sharing