Yeah.. he's been out doing fun stuff, I guess ;) He's one crazy Guy.... :p

"medic" status
 

Good and relevant stuff

Two years ago I was doing curriculum development with the 91W (now the 68W), so believe me, they're asking the same questions on the CF side.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care which is now mainstream thinking, teaches that the best treatment a combat medic can provide a wounded soldier who is still recieving "effective" enemy fire is to get on line and lay down suppressive fire in your lane. This is called the "care under fire phase" of TC3. As stated, SABA (self-aid/buddy-aid) will have to do until the medic can retrieve you and move behind cover (the "tactical field care" phase). TCCC also advocates that wounded (if lucid and otherwise able) should add their firepower to the fight; if not, play dead.

The 18D, being 18-series, is a combat arms MOS. They are not under the AMEDD (MEDCOM) proponent for this reason, they are USAJFKSWCS poroponent. They are as much a member of a fire team until a team member, striker or indig is wounded - even then, hold what you've got until you are no longer under effective fire.

Unfortunately, the law of land warfare has not caught up with this philosophy (the definition of war and combatant also needs an update).

I just went through TCCC while having the old basic training mentality fresh in my mind (yes i'm 18x). It was quite the contrast, logical vs. illogical and is by and large thought to be totally taboo by the DS's that I was under at the time. In fact, I proposed the idea of cover fire first, care second during basic. The answer NO WAY, you should pull as many men off of the fighting as was necessary to get that wounded man out of there. I persisted as any A type personality would (being that at the time I wasn't grasping the whole my rank supercedes logic thing) and was subsequently "smoked."

Please tell me that TC3 has started to make its way down to the lowest common denominator, because that could be of serious everyday use to some of those soldiers.

R

IMHO, the best thing that you can do for a casualty is to return fire until it is suppressed to some degree and it is safer to move him to cover or to treat him where he is. Obviously, that needs to be as soon as possible, like within a minute or two.

Two wounded require twice as many people, and if the medic is one of the wounded, they will both get worse care.

That also means that if you are hit, you need to make a quick assessment and keep shooting or quickly treat yourself and get back into the fight, as it might be a minute or two before we can get to you.

Just my .02, but I think well justified.

TR

lowest common denominator
 

sfbaby,

Naturally if someone was raised on the A-B-C method of caring for wounded, change comes hard. To your DS's this must seem like heresy (controlling bleeding before I've checked his airway; in other words, "C before A?")

This may be hard for you to hear, but here goes, "Your Drill Sergeants are behind current thinking and are completely wrong." While they are great at conducting PT, marching you to chow and rodding you off the line - they probably never fell out of an aircraft, fired a well-aimed shot in anger or watched a casualty die (yes they die, even when you do everything right and get a "go" at this station).

Until last month, the Institute for Surgical Research has been teaching TC3 to all SFODAs (and MARSOC teams) prior to deployment. This was done under R&D money. Now that TC3 is no longer research and is considered a mainstream concept, they are facilitating AARs with returning detachments, not just 18Ds, the whole team. Questions like, "what part of TC3 worked, didn't work; what equipment was useful, was the IFAK helpful?" etc.

Two things sfbaby:

1. You need to listen to what you are being told by the people who are training you to wear a green beanie; you might need to let go of some of what you were told in the past.

2. If you run out into an area that is recieving effective fire or a zeroed-in area, you will likely become part of the problem, not the solution.

You'll do.