Desert Training: Let the good times roll
5:54 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Today was awesome. We had the opportunity to follow the medical part of FOB Seattle. This, by far, is the best video I've shot here. The setup is this: The soldiers know that a massive casualty event will take place sometime during the day. By mass casualties, they mean more than four. They are setup to handle four. Beyond that, they go into crisis mode. Basically they have to assess who needs assistance right away, and who goes on to another aid station at another FOB or a base. FOB Seattle is set up as a level 1 care center, meaning they really don't have a lot of options to treat the wounded. FOB King, the master FOB so to speak, can handle more traumatic injuries, but options are also limited by the fact that this is not a permanent base.
Now on to the fun stuff. No one really knows what time things will kick in, but we are leaving at 1400 hrs. for our next FOB stop and it has been arranged that the event will conclude in time for us to see it. (I consider this cheating, just a bit, oh well) We arrive at the aid station at 900 and get a quick tour and Ben does a stand up and some interviews. After a while, the waiting seems endless. Then the radio squawks about an injured Iraqi soldier. He has been shot in the abdomen. We roll out to the scene in a M119, which is the equivalent of a small tank with no huge gun on the front. Instead, it has room in the back to carry four wounded soldiers. It does have a turret for a gunman though, and it is heavily armored. This is a good ride because, A: I have never ridden in a tracked vehicle, and B: They let me stick the camera out the top and videotape as we go. We arrive at the victim and I get to see how intense the rescue is in hostile territory. The medic jumps out of the vehicle and assesses the wound as another team of security personnel assesses the threat.
On the way back from the first incident, three mortar shells explode within the FOB. Thankfully the video gods are smiling and allow me to shoot the smoke from the first shell and the second and third ones exploding. This is the most dramatic video so far. (Fake war is slow sometimes) The only downside is that the video is hard to keep steady because I am shooting from the back of a troop truck that is flying over the rocky desert. It’s still cool, if you ask me. After the first injured man is dropped, a whole mess of medics rush the scene of the mortar attack. It is a very hectic scene. I get a little lost on exactly where to shoot. There are so many people rushing around trying to aid the injured. After the drill, we learn that seven are injured and two are killed. The two fatalities are not dead on arrival, but have wounds bad enough that they are dead within minutes. These two men are taken aside and the remaining injured are being tended to immediately. Larger wheeled vehicles are used to transport them after initial treatment is done on scene. This basically amounts to applying tourniquets and getting the victims on kitties (make shift medical cots).
When they arrive back at the aid station, they are treated in the order of seriousness of the wounds. The cramped quarters of the station make this situation tense and somewhat difficult. At the same time, those that need more serious care are being loaded into M119s or await the arrival of the medivac helicopters that I can hear landing very close.
The whole thing ends when all the wounded have been stabilized and loaded into the vehicles for transport. After the exercise we get a chance to speak with the leader of the aid station as well as his lead doctor, who is assigned to the unit in times of deployment. They both seem to think everything went quite well. I leave with the understanding of the complexities of these situations and some really exciting video clips to download.
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Read what Ben Bauman's fourth day was like in his travelogue.
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