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1-23rd Infantry Regiment trains to save lives at Joint Base Lewis-McChord

Medics practiced medical extractions using a hovering helicopter

a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter lifts a simulated patient on a litter during training hosted by 1-23rd Inf. Reg., 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, at JBLM. Photo credit: 1st Lt. Barry Chavez

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Emergencies don't always happen in convenient spots and with the far-flung locations that the Army sometimes trains in, it is important that medical evacuations can happen quickly and safely.

To support this, medics with 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, trained in advanced medical evacuation techniques using military helicopters at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Nov. 13.

The soldiers, in conjunction with a National Guard helicopter crew, practiced medical extractions using a hovering helicopter, which lowered a line down to medics waiting on the ground. With the help of a flight medic, patients were attached to the line and hoisted to the helicopter where they were loaded and ready to be moved for treatment.

The training exercises began with a notional casualty in a remote location. Medics working as ambulance crews were notified of the location and had to plan a route and navigate there. They then loaded the patient and performed initial treatment in the back of the ambulance as it moved to a medical facility. Once there, the medics were ready to call for helicopter evacuation. As they waited, they prepared the patient for movement and readied all of the equipment needed to hoist him to the helicopter.

The medics took turns acting as casualties and being lifted using a Jungle Penetrator, an extraction device used to move personnel between the ground and a hovering helicopter as they trained during day and night conditions.

"During the hoist familiarization, we all got to get on the Jungle Penetrator and they hoisted us up to the helicopter," said 1st Lt. Barry Chavez, an Albuquerque, N.M., native and the medical platoon leader for 1st Bn., 23rd Inf. Regt. "For the practical exercises, when it was just a standard air medevac exercise, we rotated through our ambulance crews and we were sending guys up."

This training is part of the brigade's overall Integrated Training Strategy, a broad initiative designed to ensure that all soldiers within the unit are trained and prepared for any mission they might receive.

"When I first got my hands on a copy of the ITS, I saw this big grand scheme of how you're going to develop the Stryker brigade," said Chavez. "Nothing like that exists for the medics. So, I tried to copy the concept with a successive and progressive training model where we started training at the most basic level."

"We started off training individual crews, then it became sections and then we got to platoon-level exercise where we would go out to the field for a day or two and apply all of that," Chavez continued

This is the second time that Chavez and his medics have trained using aerial assets, which can be a vital, life-saving evacuation tool during real-world emergencies. In the years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, aerial medical crews strove to get patients to advanced treatment facilities within one hour, known as the "golden hour." However, using helicopters for evacuation requires practice and an understanding of how soldiers on the ground and aircrews work together to save a patient.

"It is all good and fun to bring a helicopter into the training, but if they don't understand where that fits in to what they're really doing and all the steps that need to happen before we're actually loading the patient on to the helicopter then it does no good to go out there and play with helicopters," Chavez said.

For the medics who took part in the training, it was an eye-opening experience that they won't soon forget.

"You can trust putting somebody else on it now," said Spc. Christian Ortiz, a San Diego native and medic with 1st Bn., 23rd Inf. Regt. "Now that I've been on it, it definitely gives you that reassurance that somebody else that needs to utilize this can, and you have the utmost trust in the equipment, yourself, and the crew chief up in the helicopter. If this were to be utilized, you know that this is an option and you trust it because you've done it yourself."

With this training under their belts, the medics are more confident than ever in their abilities to save lives on the battlefield and at home.

"We could be out on a range here or out in Yakima and there is a real-world injury were we need to evacuate and treat that patient, we need to communicate with air assets and adjacent units and the brigade and so on, and get that helicopter there to move the patient," Chavez said. "It's applicable to the real-world job that the medics have."

Chavez plans to continue training his medics and they will be further tested during an exercise at Yakima Training Center in January.

"Hopefully when we go there, we will be able to really test our systems and see what we need to work on and come back and refine that stuff," Chavez said. "There are definitely a lot of things to work on. Just finding the time and resources to tackle it is really the only challenge."

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