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50th PAD
Marines burst through the door with their weapons raised. Four of their comrades were lying on the floor with various wounds. After forming a perimeter, the wounded were attended to.
No, this was not a real-life situation but situational training held at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. Training here at this desert post is as real as it can get before service members cross the berm and enter Iraq said Thomas H. DeLoach, Life Cycle Project Director for Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation.
"We try to make it very realistic," DeLoach said. "If it's not real, you're cheating the Soldiers out of skills they will need when they go north."
More than 100,000 service members have used Camp Buehring's training facilities since February 2005. DeLoach said over 90 percent of those service members that come to Camp Buehring have honed their skills in three training venues – the Medical Simulation, the Improvised Explosive Device Course, and the Engagement Skills Trainer.
"The Soldiers learn a great deal from these scenarios," DeLoach said. "The skills they learn here will save their lives."
The Medical Simulator, DeLoach said, has four dummies that actually breathe and bleed.
Unit members are required to use their combat lifesaving skills to save the person and get them ready to be evacuated to a larger medical facility.
Seaman Michael Ramirez, 3/1 India Weapons Platoon, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stands over a group of Marines as they perform combat lifesaving techniques on a wounded comrade. He said the training prepares the Soldier for real-life situations.
"PowerPoint slides are dull and boring. Plus you don't get anything out of it," Ramirez said. "Here in this room, the guys are faced with life and death situations."
Ramirez said service members who go north have to know the steps to save a person's life.
"It will prepare them for the time they get ambushed and someone goes down." The corpsman said. "Their training will kick in."
Mike Haight, a contractor working in the Medical simulator, said the scenarios the teams face are mirrored after real-life problems he faced while working as an emergency room technician at Forward Operating Base Salerno in Afghanistan in 2003. He said one has to adapt and overcome all obstacles to get the mission done.
"We make it as hard as we can," Haight said. "We try to confuse them and rattle them. We make it loud so they can't think. We give them things like an enemy counterattack to catch them off guard.
While Camp Buehring gets USARCENT warriors ready for what lies ahead up across the berm, Camp Buehring has not always had hard buildings and fence.
"I came up here in 2003 with 3rd ID (3rd Infantry Division) as a contractor and there was nothing here," DeLoach said spreading his arms across the camp. "I got together with PEO STRI and we built the buildings that you see today."
While he did not quote an exact price, DeLoach said both PEO STRI and U.S. Army funds were used in the construction.
"We felt the people that were here needed something besides tents to sleep in and MREs to eat," DeLoach said. "Over time, we have been able to add things like the mobile MOUT site and the Medical Simulator."
DeLoach said the building is not about to stop, either.
"We have several projects that we are about to start work on," he said. "We want to do everything in our power to make the servicemen and women who come through here as comfortable and aware as we can."
Haight said there is one project that he wants to see come to fruition.
"We want to build a bigger building and add a humvee to the Medical Simulator," He said. "We want to simulate an IED attack and have the service members go through the same training they are getting here."
DeLoach said the service members learn a lot from the training and some have had to use that training in real-life scenarios. DeLoach recalls an email he received from a physician's assistant earlier this year.
"In this email, the PA said the Soldier who got hit was bad off. It looked like he might not make it. The two attending Soldiers were only combat-lifesaver qualified," DeLoach said. "But they did such a great job that when the Soldier was transported, not only was he awake and alert, he was talking and joking with us.
"That's why we do this training, so people can come home alive," DeLoach added.
| Date Taken: | 06.18.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 06.18.2007 16:15 |
| Story ID: | 10892 |
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| Web Views: | 334 |
| Downloads: | 225 |
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