Photo By Staff Sgt. ShaTyra Reed-Cox | Lt. Gen. Leopoldo (Lee) Quintas, Jr., U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) Deputy...... read more read more
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“We don’t know when we will have to go to combat, we just know that we will someday,” said Lt. Gen. Leopoldo (Lee) Quintas, Jr., U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM) Deputy Commanding General as he walks through the halls of the 586th Field Hospital at Sierra Army Depot (SIAD), California. “Every second that we spend getting ready for that has to be time well spent.”
Accompanied by Brig. Gen. Mark Thompson, the FORSCOM command surgeon, Quintas toured the 586th Field Hospital, the exercise control tent, and the Effects & Enablers facility at SIAD during the FORSCOM Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise (EDRE) Medical Exercise 20-01 (MEDEX 20-01), Nov. 6, 2019.
“When I think about a leader and a Soldier that’s prepared to go to on a dangerous mission, I know the threat is going to be significant,” said Quintas. “What encourages that leader and those Soldiers to go forward in those dangerous situations is the trust that they have that should they be hurt or wounded; they are moments are receiving the best medical care.”
Quintas credits the way to provide the best medical care is by executing events like MEDEX 20-01 with Army medical units where they get to practice to a high level of fidelity and realism that challenges in their craft.
Unlike any other exercise, MEDEX 20-01 was the first time FORSCOM has practiced alerting a medical formation with a unique personnel assembly. The medical formation of the 531st Hospital Center is made up of Soldiers who are assigned to the unit at Fort Campbell but are disbursed across the United States in different hospitals.
“Two-thirds of the team is stationed at Fort Campbell,” said Col. Pretlow, the commander of the 531st Hospital Center. “The other third had to be recalled from installations all throughout the United States.”
The challenge this EDRE posed on the 531st Hospital Center was moving the medical professional back to Fort Campbell and get them through a series of events to prepare them for deployment to include connecting with their units and making sure that they are fully integrated in order to conduct operation
In order to pull off an exercise of this magnitude, there has to be a great deal of investment. This investment stretches far beyond a monetary value said Quintas. This multi-year effort is an investment that involved a significant amount of planning and a huge amount of preparation.
“While it is an investment of the taxpayers’ dollars, it’s also a huge investment in time of our Soldiers and our leaders, said Quintas. “That is our most precious resource when we think about warfighting readiness.”
Quintas told the Soldiers and leaders he spoke to that it is important that this training event does not stand on its own. This exercise served as a journey of learning and readiness. He stressed that the medical professions need to take what they learned and continue to improve themselves in order to get better.
“We also got to take what we’ve learned here and share it across the force so that the investment that we made pays off many times over in warfighting readiness for the Army,” said Quintas. “What I’ve seen here today confirms that this exactly the right thing that we should be doing.”
| Date Taken: | 11.06.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 11.08.2019 10:43 |
| Story ID: | 351001 |
| Location: | SIERRA ARMY DEPOT, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 110 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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