March Drill (Sunday)

So Sunday was our big hands on day. We did tons of classes on Saturday (see Saturday posting) so that we could just do hands on and get out as early as possible on Sunday. Our goal Sunday was to practice all of our bleeding control techniques, put IVs in each other and completer our AARs.

We woke up at 0445 and cleaned up the barracks. This went decently smoothly although I had to count our sheets three times because I found a pillowcase in one of the bundles during my first recount. That kinda sucked but it didn't take too much longer and we still were able to get our barracks totally squared away and had accountability for everyone a good half hour before the drill sergeants showed up.

After a quick breakfast in the chow hall we marched back to building 521 to begin practicing. We started with going over evaluating casualties and treating hemorrhaging, flail chests, etc. Then we had a long time to ask questions and go over mock situations which was very helpful. We also got to hear some more crazy stories from the medic which was cool.

We then had a pretty intense demonstration from the medics on how to put in an IV. They did it with a 14 gauge needle (which is big enough to fit an 18ga inside which is what they use when you give blood) so that we could see better. It bled a lot simply because it was so big and was dripping all down his arm. It was kinda gross and one kid started having problems due to seeing so much of it. Then, to illustrate the importance of taping down your IV line properly, she taped it to his arm and then started to throw the bag. Luckily it just bounced from the tape instead of yanking catheter out of his arm. It made one kid pass out though.

I asked Private Ware to stick me since she seems to be a very stable, steady person and I thought she'd be good at figuring it out. We were the second pair at our table and I ended up being right. She stuck me perfectly and barely made me bleed at all. It was pretty cool. She hooked me up to a 500mL bag of some Sodium Phosphate fluid or something that they use to rehydrate people. It was cool because it all just kinda drips in and you have to keep the bag held up high to keep enough pressure to put fluids into your vein instead of having the line and bag fill with blood. I don't know if it's a bad thing at all but I kinda thought it was fun to bring it up and down and watch the blood flow in and out of my arm. Kinda cool for some reason.

My bag finished emptying just in time to pull the catheter as all of the squad leaders left to my first ELP (Emerging Leaders Program) AAR (After Action Review for those who forgot). We went over how we did things and whether or not we did well in leading everyone and figuring out where everyone needed to be. One person who I didn't really know couldn't seem to shut up and made the AAR a bit of a mess but it was cool to be involved in the process. After AAR, PFC Gluch told me that I did well enough as squad leader that they want me coming to ELP from now on which is way cool. I don't know if they have enough spots to have me as a squad leader but PVT Majors was one and he just shipped so maybe I'll get a chance again. Either way, I'll get to go to ELP meetings and learn how they do things.

When we left ELP I got to start trying to stick people myself. The first guy I did already had two holes in him when I got to him and I only managed to stick another hole in him and couldn't get anything. The medic thought I was too nervous so he had me take a break and try again on someone else but I just couldn't see his veins. I also think I need to start eating with chop sticks because the way you have to hold those needles was kinda awkward and I wasn't very steady. I ended up missing on the second guy too but I was finally able to hit PFC Goodman and she said that no one has been able to successfully stick her before since she's so small (5'1" 111lb) PFC Goodman stuck me as well since I have such easy veins and she did really well. It bled quite a bit for some reason but it wasn't a painful stick at all. It actually hurt even less than PVT Ware's did on my other arm. For some reason both arms showed a bruise starting Tuesday or Wednesday but they were both very good sticks.

Once everyone successfully stuck somebody we did a quick AAR and we were able to get out around 1530. It was a great drill overall and I learned a ton about not only CLS duties but how to try to help lead people as well albeit in a limited leadership role. Very fun though and I can't wait to go back.

Drill Hangover

I'm finding that I come home from drill with what I will describe as a drill hangover. On Monday, I had to avoid answering questions to avoid replying hooah to almost everything which sounds really weird if you've never been to drill. I almost snapped to parade rest when talking to my auto tech teacher (who kinda reminds me of a cranky version of Sgt Walls), I nearly yelled, "make a hole" when my friends mom had to squeeze through a group of my other friends, I felt entirely wrong standing in front of doors and defaulted to parade rest while waiting for my girlfriend to come to the door. I'm finding my only wish with the Guard is that I could spend more time on post. And of course, by the time next drill rolls around I'll have to recondition myself to do all those things again although that is becoming easier and easier the more drills I do.

More Reasons I'm Proud to be Part of This

I am constantly given more reasons to be proud of the US military. The stories and attitudes of the men who have been deployed are often awe inspiring.

There is a very obvious difference between us and those we fight and this was illustrated in the stories from the medics who came to drill to teach us. All of our instructors have been deployed to either Iraq and Afghanistan and I'm sure they could sit and tell stories for days. I usually give names but I don't know how to spell some of them so I'll just refer to all of them in general terms to avoid messing them up.

The most striking story was that of one of the guys one of our medics served with. There is a video of him being shot in the butt and scrambling behind a Humvee which I'm sure is simply seen as either sad or comical to most who see it. However, what the video doesn't show is what happened later. Shortly after the medic was shot, the other guys who were with him found and shot his assailant. He was wounded but did not die and the medic who got shot treated the man who had just shot him in an attempt to kill him. If that isn't noble I don't know what is. SFC Stace says he has a picture of the two at their aid station. I don't believe anyone could argue with SFC Stace when he said that although we kick butt, we do it in an honorable way.

On the flip side, one of the other combat medics that came in and taught us told a story about a young (I think he said 10yr old) kid that he worked on over in Afghanistan. The Army was test firing a weapon in a huge open field and an insurgent group decided to take advantage of it and mortared a local village nearby in hopes of blaming it on the Americans. Where we save as many lives as we can while still providing security, they repeatedly show their willingness to slaughter anyone and everyone if they can possibly use it to make a point. If we are unwilling to stand up against that grade of men, I would hate to meet the people who would be a war worth fighting.

That same medic told a story of a local man who's entire family was killed by the Taliban. He ended up becoming a gate guard at the American base and was fiercely pro-US. He carried around a stick which the Sergeant motioned to be about 5 inches across and would promptly take care of any of the locals who would come to the base and do things they weren't supposed to. He said he often had to go out and treat locals who he had bopped on the head. Stories like that are the reason I believe both these wars were winnable from the start. In general, our soldiers are admirable men and women and our way of life and our ideals are good. I have a hard time believing the Afghan people would rather live under the Taliban or the Iraqis under Saddam.

We had one other experience with another soldier who was there on other business when we were in the chow hall. He came up behind us in line for chow and when told that he was welcome to go ahead of us (there were probably more than 40 of us ahead of him) he responded that he had all the time in the world. He was on post to request another deployment. He has bee on three voluntary deployments thus far and told us that he has another one in him before he retires. He said though, that the army doesn't seem to agree which is "why they game [him] that stupid purple heart." He commented that for some reason, "when your vehicle explodes and you wake up naked in a Blackhawk (I'm guessing MEDEVAC) the army thinks its a bad thing. To me that just sounds like a good Friday night." One deployment is honorable, volunteering for more is admirable, doing so despite being a casualty, shows a level of commitment that few people have to anything.

National Guard Punishment

I have to say, I love the way the Guard does things. The way we do discipline is great. As background our Staff Sergeant, Sgt Walls, is a woman a little unlike any I've ever met. She's incredibly thorough, super dedicated and a she certainly commands respect. She's very helpful to us and in return she asks for four things in a way that only she could. These are 1. Checking our mypay accounts, 2. Checking our GRAP accounts, 3. Checking our AKO accounts and most importantly, keeping her in the loop. Every month she calls us to make sure we're coming out to drill and got our drill letters and leaves the same message every month if we don't answer and tells us to call her back. She also checks the ADA County Sheriff website every day to make sure none of us got arrested and will call us if we didn't call her before she saw our picture on the site. Each drill at AAR we get to here her speech about keeping her in the loop, calling her back, etc. It's really not that hard and she's not a scary person but for some reason people don't do it. I don't get it.

We are also generally able to get out of drill for a while for things like dances and whatnot if we let them know ahead of time because it is understood that many of us are still in school and you can't get those experiences back. However, going along with Sgt. Walls's "keep me in the loop" mantra, we have to let them know ahead of time.

Three of our soldiers, who are referred to as the "Three Amigos" were all going to their school's "Sweetheart's" dance Saturday night during drill. However, they made the mistake of not telling our cadre until Friday. They were still allowed to go but they had the opportunity to pay for it.

Instead of doing something mundane like pushups the three amigos were required to carry around Slagathor (a fake Christmas tree w/lights), the Baseplate (a Christmas tree stand), and the Bombshell (a bowling-ball-sized river rock painted to look like a bomb with a fuse) for all of drill. During our class on tourniquets Slagathor inevitably started bleeding profusely and had to be fixed up, pictures of which will assuredly be in the next drill letter. We had a great time messing with them all of drill as they had to keep accountability of their items.

To cap it off, they had to take said items to the dance and get pictures of themselves and their dates with their items. Unfortunately, Slagathor, the Baseplate, and the Bombshell were not allowed into the dance due to their high schools apparent racism against green, gold, and fused people but they did get photographic evidence as instructed.

During AAR I asked MSG Gordley if their was any chance I could get those pictures for the blog. (I found out last month that they read the blog although I never even told them it existed. They are the government I guess. Luckily I honestly don't have anything bad to say about the Guard or my cadre so I didn't get myself busted in the three months of postings before I knew they read it.) He likes the blog so he made the three amigos get my email address and they were told to email me the picture so I will post that as soon as I get it from them. I'm looking forward to seeing it myself as well.
GOT THE PICTURES

March Drill (Saturday)

Okay, lots to post this month so bear with me. I'll break this up as best I can to keep it from just being a big boring block of text.

This month consisted of Combat Life Saver Hands on Tasks and Tactical Casualty Care. Every team out in the field will have a Combat Life Saver who is responsible for administering emergency first aid to casualties, assist medics if available, and arrange of evacuation of the casualty if needed. We did not have the time to become completely CLS certified but we did get through some great stuff. According to the ppt we used as a visual which I was able to find on Google “If during the next war you could do only two things, 1) place a tourniquet and 2) treat a tension pneumothorax, then you can probably save between 70 and 90 percent of all the preventable deaths on the battlefield.” -COL Ron Bellamy

We learned how to do both of these things as well as other pressure dressings, pressure points, IVs, 9-line MEDEVACs, casualty evaluation, nasopharyngeal airways, etc. Due to the technical nature and extent of what we learned I will post the things we learned in a separate posting for those who want to read it and for my own benefit in rewriting what we learned. For those who are uninterested in the specifics however, I will make this posting simply the meat and potatoes of what happened at drill.

As before, I showed up on post at 0825 to get my Goretex and MRE (grilled chicken this time, my second favorite). Just before we started dividing into squads, PFC Gluch, Platoon 2s Platoon Guide, informed me that I would be squad leader for fourth squad, second platoon. During drill this is obviously a much easier job than it would be in a field environment and basically just consists of keeping accountability for those in your squad, leading your squad while marching, creating details when tasks need to be done and just helping out your troops when needed. I also had a patch for my right arm to denote that I was squad leader. My squad consisted of PVT Barta, PVT Bennet, PVT Knudsen, PVT Stock, PVT McKie, PVT Lee-Harkins, PVT Gable, PVT Ware (who was a huge help), myself and one other soldier who's name I'll remember eventually. I was also supposed to have PVT Clack but he was unable to be at drill.

At first I didn't know my squad's names at all but after checking all of them off on my sheet so many times I was eventually able to get their names down. Our first formation took a little long because of name recognition problems and such but starting next month we're changing the way we do our first formation and it will be much more efficient.

After our first formation we moved to our standard PT test. I've continued to improve in PT due to working out with Norah every day (except for sit-ups, I can't get those to go faster.). I'm now at 48 pushups/minute, 44 sit-ups/minute and a 6:14 mile. This month we ran on the track instead of our road course so we had to do 4 laps instead of just 1. Normally I hate track running because it's so repetitive and their doesn't seem to be an end in sight but it worked pretty well this time. It was nice being able to hear our times from SGT Seader and it was cool to be able to lap people as we ran. The track we ran is somewhat dynamic (not a lot but it's not just a pure oval and it was made vastly more interesting by the huge gap between the front and back of the pack. It was a good PT test overall and I'm glad to see that my running is helping since I really do not like running.

After PT we went back to the barracks and had chow, got our linens, and had our time to get cleaned up. Luckily I had Grilled Chicken for my lunch which is very good and I think there was a bag of m&ms if I remember right. I also got to freshen up on my hospital corners with SPC McKenna's help.

We then left the barracks and marched over to room 440 where we had our classroom instruction time on how to be a CLS (Combat Life Saver). I don't remember exactly how long we ended up being in there but it was a very long time. We were having some trouble with people starting to fall asleep and having to get up but I didn't think it was that bad. We had breaks to get up for a bit and had a short hands on section to break things up so it wasn't that difficult. I think the main thing that helped me though was the fact that I was taking notes. I have about 8 pages worth in a notepad that came in our Battlebooks. I think that made a big difference in keeping me awake. (Everything in bold is what we learned, if you don't care, just skip it and go to what we did.)

We started out learning how to clear airways and fix breathing problems then moved into different ways of controlling bleeding. We started with Emergency Trauma Dressings, moved into tourniquets (army has cool tourniquets btw) and learned the different ways to use them and other things to do with hemorrhaging extremities. We also went over a really cool new thing that the army just started using called Chitosan bandages which I had never heard of before. They're made for massive arterial bleeding and are made out of the chitin in shrimp shells (people with shrimp allergies are allergic to the shrimp proteins, chitin is hypoallergenic). None of our instructors had used one before since they're very new but it turns out a good family friend of ours had one used on an injury to his wrist once and it worked very well.

One of the coolest things we learned was how to treat collapsed lungs and tension pneumothoraxes caused by puncturing chest wounds. This section included diagnosing cyanosis (deoxygenated blood basically) and identifying sternum separation which causes what's called a "flail chest". We during these classes we also learned about the different recovery positions to put the casualties in after treating them. (Again, I'll go into what we learned in detail in the other posting.)

We then went into basic combat casualty care and our responsibilities as a CLS. One thing that was very highly stressed was the fact that, as much as it sucks, you don't fix your buddy until you have fire superiority and the fact that you're a soldier first and a CLS second. The three responsibilities we have are to 1. Save preventable deaths, 2. Prevent additional casualties and 3. Complete the mission and we have to remember that the care we can administer on a battlefield is going to be limited and that's just the nature of the beast. Our priorities when giving care are bleeding, then traumatic chest wounds, IV, splinting fractures to prep for EVAC, communicating status, starting a field medical card and transmitting a 9-line MEDEVAC request (last one isn't necessarily in that order). All of this is done after checking for ABC's (airway, breathing, circulation).

We then went through how to evaluate and classify a casualty while dealing with the complications of being on a battlefield.

Our final class for the day was the 9-line MEDEVAC request. The lines are 1. location, 2. radio frequency, call signal (basically how to get a hold of you while EVAC is en route), 3. # of casualties by precedence, 4. Special equipment required, 5. # of casualties by type, 6. Security level of pickup site, 7. Method of marking the pickup site, 8. Casualty nationality and status, 9. Nuclear, Biological, Chemical contamination (not really used).

During a break in our classroom time MSG Gordley called me out into another room and promoted me which was kinda cool. One of the nice things the National Guard does is massively incentivize recruiting (although that may change since we're doing so well) and we have a program called "Stripes for Buddies". I just had a friend join up and through this program I was able to get promoted. I am now a Private First Class (PFC) and will remain PFC until after Basic Training, unfortunately you can only go as high as PFC (which is an E-3) before going to BCT.

After our classroom time we went to the chow hall for a hot dinner which was very nice. The food is actually surprisingly good in the chow hall, it's kinda like going to scout camp. This was where we met the guy going for a fourth deployment that I mentioned in my other posting. I ate dinner with PVT Ware, PFC Gluch and PFC Markle; all of whom are great soldiers. PVT Ware was in my squad, PFC Gluch was my Patrol Guide, and PFC Markle is another one of the squad leaders. During dinner I found out tat PVT Ware's father is Command Sergeant Major of a Special Forces unit and she's one of 17 kids. That's a pretty intense story if you ask me.

After chow we went to another suicide prevention briefing that the army mandated everyone do. This one involved a video of a soldier who's life essentially just sucked (it was a fake story but a very plausible one). He made the mistake of getting engaged one month before deployment (it's amazing how many people do stuff like that and expect things to work out) and it went terribly for him. His fiancee got impregnated by his good friend from high school who then spent one of his paychecks and was driving his car and essentially took his spot in life while he was stuck 10,000 miles away. He of course became rather depressed and it affected his performance on the job. He was finally able to get things together a little by talking to his battle buddy but his battle buddy got shot and killed. When he finally started getting over that he got an email that his old fiancee had married the guy who impregnated her.

After watching the video we went through and watched it again and it was broken up and we put in choices on how the poor guy should react to each change in his situation. We guided him through the process of talking to his chaplain, then a guy on the Combat Stress Prevention Team, and eventually getting a grasp on his situation without endangering himself or anyone else. It was actually a very well-done briefing although by the end of it all of us wanted to see the fiancee get what was coming to her.

After the briefing we were able to go back to the barracks and retire for the night. This month I volunteered for the 0100-0200 fireguard shift with PVT Noteboom since for the last few months I've taken the first fireguard shift and it was time for me to take a bad one. After my shift we woke up PFC Barnett and PVT Hobbes and that was the end of my Saturday at drill. I'll post Sunday tomorrow, I don't think it will be as long.

Pictures

By the way, I feel like my posts should have pictures to go with the text. If anyone reading this has pictures that would be usable please email them to me.

Stories from Drill (#3-Sgt Waters)

So Sgt Waters is one of my favorite guys in our platoon. I met with him when I was first looking at joining up and he gave me a tour of Gowen Field which is my base. He was an MP(military police) when he started and then became a security specialist later on. He also spent time driving in a convoy but I don't know if this was during his time in one of these MOSs or if it was separate. We had a great time going around the base and meeting with Mr. Queen (one of the Apache pilots), one of the fixed wing pilots (whose name escapes me), and some of the other guys on post. Very nice guy.

He's told a few stories about his time in Iraq which I found interesting.

The first story that I remember from him he told when I asked something about whether or not they ever had a problem with rocket attacks or something. He told me of a time when he and a few other guys were driving a suburban around the perimeter of the base. Their base in Iraq had a 2.5 mile perimeter making it a fairly sizable compound. As they were driving around a rocket was fired at the base. It went completely over the base and landed outside the perimeter, about 6-8 feet from Sgt Waters Suburban. They were obviously shaken but when they returned to base he said it was comforting to find the rocket hadn't even scratched the paint and it was nice to think that the people he was fighting couldn't even hit that large a base and their weapons had that small of an effective radius. Now, the point of this story isn't to diminish the fact that the people we're fighting are dangerous and the war in Iraq is certainly no picnic by any means. It's simply nice to know that 90% of the time our enemies succeed it's through luck and we can win this war simply because we are good at what we do.

Sgt Waters told many stories of his time as a driver in Iraq. His job mainly involved driving high powered people from one side of Iraq to the other. He said it was pretty nice driving people of high rank and dignitaries because it allowed him to get good equipment more easily than the other guys. He said it was also cool going around with them because it gave him a different look into what was going on in the area as he drove from meeting to meeting and negotiation to negotiation. He talked about how his favorite thing from his deployment was gaining that perspective and talked about how you can listen to talk show hosts babble all day long and never really know what goes on in the way he does from being there. His stories are very interesting and he's great to talk to because he really seems to have learned a ton while he was over there.

We also spoke for a while about IEDs and the affect that they have. I guess over in Iraq the convoys go absolutely everywhere going as fast as they can (which, for a fully armored Humvee, is about 80mph). They do this because people are smart enough that they no longer attempt to fight us directly except on rare occasions. The fighting is now done simply be a guy with a button who's trying to hit it at the right time to do some damage. This timing is obviously made more difficult as a convoys speed increases. He said they actually had the road explode behind him fairly often. There were a few times though where an IED went off in the middle of the convoy and disabled them and they were ambushed on some of these occasions. Luckily he was there later in the war and our strategies and equipment is much better at dealing with IEDs then when we first went in. The new Humvees are about 2000 pounds heavier than the old ones and have much better protection. One big problem was that the flames from the IEDs would come through the transmission tunnel and the firewall and into the vehicle. This problem has been addressed and that has drastically reduced casualties. They also have changed tactics to where when a Humvee is disabled, the soldiers very rarely get out for very long. Instead they have tow bars they just slap onto the dead Humvee and they drag it to somewhere safe to avoid a second, generally larger IED which is popular after the convoy has been stopped. Because of such improvements his convoy only had two casualties despite multiple IED hits. One man went home due to a piece of shrapnel in his wrist and one with a piece of shrapnel in his ankle. Again, that's comforting to hear. Of course, the insurgencies methods are improving as well but I have faith in our organization and our commanders to stay ahead of the curve.

Well, Sgt Waters has told more stories than that but I'll leave this posting there, maybe I'll have time to put up more later. I still have a few more people's stories to do though.