Published: March 16, 2008 10:46 pm         

Three Terre Haute medics learn new training in Kuwait

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait — EDITOR’S NOTE: James Foley is a freelance reporter embedded with the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. In this story, he reports on three Terre Haute soldiers undergoing new life-saving training.

A flesh-colored mannequin oozes blood onto the floor while its rubber lungs gasp for air. Three soldiers from Indiana's 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team rush in to administer first aid.

It's part of the latest life-saving training at Camp Buehring. The computer-driven mannequins make the training both interactive and intense. And the soldiers appreciate it.

“As real as we can get without cutting off the foot of a goat (for practice),” said Spec. Mathieu Householder, 24, of Terre Haute. “Stop the bleeding. If you don’t stop the bleeding, it’s pointless,” Householder said.

The three soldiers scurry to administer care using knowledge learned from recent casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s called MARCH — a prioritized system that focuses on Massive Hemorrhage, Airway Compromise, Respiration, Circulation, Hypothermia/ Head Injury — in order of medical priority.

It’s about life-saving priority in these moments of critical injuries, said Mike Haight, a former Special Forces medic who leads the training class along with another SF medic and founder of the program, Brent Cloud, who has been deployed more than 50 times to 27 countries.

“We try to get them to see what the patient is telling them. The biggest mistake is guys get focused on one particular injury and don’t assess the whole patient,” Haight said, pointing that one group focused too long on fixing a tourniquet before realizing the mannequin had stopped breathing.

One of Householder’s partners, Spec. Richard Raley, 22, of Sullivan, said this kind of simulation allows you to, “actually see realistic breathing so when we come across it, you know how to react.”

Raley just got married to his fiancée, Sasha Raley, 20, while on a four-day pass from training in Georgia. “This is my honeymoon,” he said with an ironic smile. “E-mail is a great thing.”

Raley said that everyone in his company, Alpha 1/151, has qualified to be a combat life saver. This is important because there is usually only one combat medic per platoon.

The third member of their first-aid group — Sgt. Martin Campbell, 37, of Terre Haute, said, “Every training we can do like this is valuable.”

Campbell was last deployed during the Gulf War. To compare that deployment to this one is like apples to oranges, he said.

“I lived in the middle of the desert (then). The quality of living now is 20 times better.”

Brent Cloud began this program at Camp Buehring last year promising the Army he’d train 1,500 combat medics.

“I got bored,” Brent said, “so opened it up to all Combat Life Savers. In one year I put 12,000 (soldiers) through it.”

Since May, with Haight’s help, Cloud has put 28,000 soldiers total through the course, and expects to put 40,000 soldiers through it before year’s end.

“It’s based on the wounds we’re seeing,” Cloud said. “Experience backed [it] up.”

As to the effectiveness of the MARCH training using the mannequins, Haight said he recently received an e-mail from Iraq.

The e-mail was about a soldier who had suffered shrapnel trauma to nine different organs. According to the message, the soldier wouldn’t have survived without the immediate care administered by two fellow soldiers.

Both soldiers had been through Brent’s life-saving course at Camp Buehring.