Photo By Capt. Ernest Wang | U.S. Soldiers portraying battlefield casualties sit in a designated triage area after...... read more read more
DRAWSKO POMORSKIE TRAINING AREA , Poland - At the forest’s edge, 18 U.S. and Polish soldiers laid silent, their bodies bloodied and broken. Some were missing eyes, others legs. A few were split open by shrapnel, guts exposed to the midday heat. Wounded by roadside bombs, they now fidgeted and mumbled to each other in the shade.
“Anyone want some cheese spread?” a soldier asked. He was rifling through his lunch, a Meal Ready-to-Eat.
The soldiers had volunteered to play the casualties for the mass-casualty simulation here at Exercise Anakonda 2016, a Polish-led, multinational exercise with over 31,000 troops from 24 partner nations. The were drawn from different units across both armies, and made up with moulage by a professional makeup company from the United Kingdom. Amputee actors were hired to portray battlefield amputations.
One of the U.S. Soldiers, SPC Abraham Martinez, a unit supply specialist from the 10th Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, had helped launch the first U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle in Poland only the day before.
“Mission here today is to be a casualty to give the medics good training,” said Martinez, a native of Yucaipa, California. Pointing to a laminated card with details about his injuries, he continued, “I have 2nd degree burns and will lie down on the ground screaming.”
To plan the mass-casualty simulation, a team of four U.S. Army medical officers met with the Polish military over a period of six months, making five reconnaissance trips to the training site at Drawsko Pomorskie.
Maj. Thomas Lehmann, a U.S. Army pharmacist and native of Smithtown, New York, was one of the four medical officers. He said the aim of the mass-casualty simulation was to test the multinational soldiers’ ability to receive, treat and evacuate casualties, as well as their ability to work in conjunction with each other.
“There’s certainly a language barrier that does exist, although a lot of our medical practices are very similar. We’ll operate, I think, very smoothly. We have the advantage that we have been working together here at Anakonda, practicing our interoperatability,” said Lehmann before the simulation.
During the actual event, a series of mock improvised explosive devices detonated against a military convoy. The attack occured in an open area directly below a hillside structure from which U.S. and Polish general officers observed the action.
Following the detonations, troops immediated reacted by setting up a triage area where U.S. combat medics from the 10th Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3d Infantry Division, and Polish medics from the 25th Medical Support, could rendezvous to evacuate the injured. Casualties were brought to a combined battalion aid station. Those deemed critically injuried were air evacuated to the brigade sustainment battalion in Miroslowiec, where Army physicians could provide advanced care.
Spc. Dustin-Ray Tholl, a combat medic, made multiple trips in a forward litter ambulance to ferry the wounded to the battalion aid station. His Polish counterparts used a 1970s-era M113 armored personnel carrier which they say saw action during the Vietnam war. The U.S. and Polish medics had been training for two days prior to the mass-casualty event.
“We’ve been doing a lot of blast injuries, vehicle collision injuries, different crush injuries and everything of that nature,” said Tholl, a native of Reno, Nevada.
Despite the serious nature of the exercise, the combat medics did find time to build camaraderie prior to the main event.
“We had a big ol’ dance circle with some of the Polish medics,” said Tholl. “We were all sittting out here, laughing and joking, just playing some music and dancing around. Then a few of them started to come over and we all incorporated each other.”
When asked what dances they learned, the Polish medics laughed and said, “Texas hip-hop.”
Tholl grinned, “We were teaching them how to Whip and do the Cupid Shuffle.”
| Date Taken: | 06.11.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 06.14.2016 08:16 |
| Story ID: | 201048 |
| Location: | PL |
| Web Views: | 202 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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