Photo By Staff Sgt. Ian Valley | Army Reserve soldiers assigned to the 852nd Medical Detachment, 385th Field Hospital,...... read more read more
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FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. — The water was cold, the current unpredictable, and the task was simple: get your team to the other side. For Pfc. Aiden Chilson, a combat medic with the 852nd Medical Detachment, it was the hardest thing he did all week — and exactly what he needed.
“I’ve never been strong around the water,” Chilson said. “But it was very eye-opening how, as a team, you can kind of help cover some of those weaknesses.”
Chilson was one of many soldiers from the 852nd who spent the week at Fairchild Air Force Base pushing through an intensive pre-deployment training program designed to prepare the unit for an upcoming overseas deployment. The schedule went well beyond bandages and triage; it included SERE instruction, combatives, water egress, aircraft evacuation drills, and cultural familiarization for the region they’ll soon call home.
As a medical detachment, the 852nd’s core mission is saving lives. But Maj. Charlotte Nelson, a critical care nurse with the unit, knows that downrange, the line between provider and warrior can blur without warning.
“If we’re not in the hospital, say, on an outside mission, we need to be able to be self-reliant, work as a cohesive team, and take care of the patients and ourselves,” Nelson said.
Nelson emphasized that the unit’s soldiers bring a dual identity to the mission: civilian healthcare professionals who must also function as deployable soldiers. Bridging that gap, she said, requires more than technical training.
“Combat ready for a medical unit means we’re disciplined physically, psychologically, and we have the medical know-how,” she said. “So we do training in all three aspects.”
The training week was deliberately stacked with scenarios most medical soldiers rarely rehearse. Monday focused on administrative readiness and classroom instruction covering patient movement and cultural familiarization for the deployment area. By midweek, the classroom gave way to the field.
SERE instructors led soldiers through both urban evasion and wilderness survival techniques, skills that address what happens when a mission goes sideways and a soldier finds themselves somewhere they shouldn’t be, trying to get back to where they should.
“As medical professionals, we know our medical jobs, we know our Army jobs,” Chilson said. “But we aren’t really trained on what to do when everything goes wrong and you’re all of a sudden in a place you’re not supposed to be.”
Wednesday brought the week’s most physically demanding day: combatives in the morning followed by water egress drills. Soldiers practiced surviving and maneuvering after a water-based vehicle incident, a scenario that demands both physical conditioning and team coordination. On Thursday the detachment practiced aircraft evacuation drills, walking soldiers through the procedures for safely extracting patients and personnel from a military aircraft.
For Sgt. Tristan Heil another 68W combat medic preparing for her first deployment, the combatives and water training pushed her in unexpected ways.
“I’m scared of the ocean, there’s a reason I’m not in the Navy,” she said with a laugh. “But it was nice to get into how you would try to familiarize yourself in that situation when you’re scared of natural bodies of water.”
The unit also received an unusual addition to the schedule: a block of instruction on canine medicine, preparing medics to treat military working dogs alongside human casualties. Chilson said the crossover clicked quickly.
“There are similar protocols, but there’s some simple things you wouldn’t think about, and if you’re in a situation downrange working on people and their canine, you need to know both,” he said.
For many in the 852nd, the week reframed how they think about their upcoming deployment. Chilson, who joined the Army Reserve to follow a family tradition of service and a personal drive to help people “on their worst days so it’s not their last days,” said the training gave him something harder to teach than technique.
“With familiarity comes a sense of certainty, a sense of calm,” he said. “The worst thing you can do in a situation is panic. Since we’ve been familiarized with these different ideas and skills, I feel more confident that we’re going to be able to adapt to situations a little bit better than we would have prior to this training.”
Heil echoed that sentiment, adding that the value of training in a safe environment is the ability to evaluate and improve before the stakes are real.
“It matters because you don’t realize it matters until it does,” she said. “You get to practice in a safe environment, knowing your life’s not on the line. So you can think back on it and say, ‘This is what I can change because it didn’t go well that way.’”
She also credited the training organizer, Sgt.1st Class Teena Kocsis, 852nd Med Det. Wardmaster, noting that while administrative requirements often dominate Reserve training calendars, this week struck a necessary balance.
“It’s important to have your paperwork together and make sure you’re still deployable,” she said. “But it’s also good to know you still have your skill set in order, because it’s easy to say ‘I know how to do that,’ and then you’re downrange second-guessing yourself.”
Nelson said the physical and psychological demands of the week produced something she considers essential before any deployment: unit cohesion.
“After some of the training we had, which was very physically and psychologically demanding, I feel like the soldiers have really bonded,” she said. “And I think that’s the first step in getting a good team together.”
Beyond the technical skills and physical conditioning, Nelson said her goal was simpler: she wants every soldier in the 852nd to know they can count on the person next to them.
“I want our soldiers to be able to know they can count on each other,” she said, “and know that they have the skills and can work their way up to being more for the team.”
| Date Taken: | 05.03.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 05.18.2026 16:59 |
| Story ID: | 564255 |
| Location: | FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 10 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Ready for anything: 852nd Medical Detachment sharpens combat skills ahead of deployment, by SSG Ian Valley, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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