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BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - The Soldiers of C Company, 201st Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, trained four Afghan national army soldiers in Tactical Combat Casualty Care Under Fire in northeastern Afghanistan.
After six weeks of combat medical training the soldiers graduated in a small ceremony on Feb. 28, at Forward Operating Base Fenty and are ready to take their training to the field.
"They went through everything our medics go through in the states," said Army 2nd Lt. Victor Lopez, treatment platoon leader from Tucson, Ariz. "Tactical Combat Casualty Care Under Fire is the basic doctrine of what we are teaching in the states."
The training involved classroom and hands-on instruction, using the most realistic and up to date techniques the U.S. Army uses on their own Soldiers, developing them into life saving experts.
"We didn't hold anything back," Lopez said. "We put them through the best available training with the latest techniques and we've seen these guys grow from students to subject matter experts."
The training was new to the ANA soldiers and was difficult at times, but they managed to make it successfully through.
"The toughest part is learning to stabilize our friends in the kill zone and then carrying them out to safety," Quamuddin Sabbilnd, graduating ANA soldier, said. "We have to stop the bleeding right away or they can die. It is very difficult, but we did it."
The training culminated in a group exercise for the soldiers. They were faced with a battlefield problem involving two casualties in a hostile area and they had to quickly assess the situation, secure the area and save the lives of the U.S. Soldiers who were playing the part of wounded.
"They were put through the paces as if they were in combat and got hit, moving in tactical formation, coming under fire and then reacting to the casualties' wounds," said Army Lt. Col. Bradley White, 201st BSB commander from Council Bluffs, Iowa. "They quickly found the casualties, moved them from the kill zone and treated them. We're proud of our Soldiers, but even more proud of these four [ANA] soldiers here today."
The 201st BSB medical command and the 5th Kandak command consider this first training circuit a success and has high hopes for the future of the program.
"Our first four soldiers [to go through the training] will train more ANA soldiers and we will be witness to other ceremonies like this," said ANA Lt. Col. Abdul Qauoom Gurbaz, 5th Kandak commander. "We have 10 more soldiers ready to get medical training so we hope the U.S. doctors will train them as well as they trained these four soldiers."
The hope is that the program will continue to teach ANA soldiers to save lives after the 201st BSB redeploys and are replaced by other medical teams.
"This program was presented to us when we got here and we developed it," Lopez said. "This was our first group of four to go through. I hope that when we leave we'll pass this on and the next unit will be able to expand on it."
| Date Taken: | 03.04.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 03.06.2009 10:09 |
| Story ID: | 30809 |
| Location: | BAGRAM AIR FIELD, AF |
| Web Views: | 286 |
| Downloads: | 275 |
This work, Afghan National Army soldiers train to save lives, by SSG David Hopkins, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
