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Army medical teams compete on Fort Bragg in realistic training

15.06.11

Staff Sgt. Thomas Sager had just dragged a 180-pound mannequin almost 1,000 feet in a medical sled.

Sager - his camouflage stained pink from a sniper's paintball, sweat pouring from his forehead - stood exhausted under nozzles spraying mist at the 18th Airborne Corps Medical Simulation Training Center.

For the past two hours, he commanded a three-man team through the forest while wearing a 30-pound rucksack and body armor. At one point, he rushed to put on his gas mask while yellow smoke drifted toward him.

Sager, a 36-year-old who works in the Fort Carson, Colo., veterinary treatment facility, is one of 20 soldiers from installations in the United States and Europe at Fort Bragg this week for the Army Medical Command Best Warrior competition.

Deeper in the woods on Tuesday, a loud explosion signaled a roadside bomb blast.

Much of Sager's job was to find, treat and carry to safety heavy mannequins with gruesome injuries made more realistic by fake blood. A bloody dummy in the front seat of a broken military jeep needed help after the simulated IED blast. As Sager checked the dummy for injuries, judges would respond to his questions about its vital signs. This one, the victim in the bomb blast, was bleeding from its forehead. Sager bandaged the wound before his team moved the injured mannequin onto a stretcher.

Source: Fayetteville Observer