One of six Virginia Task Force 1 dogs being deployed on search and rescue efforts in Japan.

At the request of the Government of Japan, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has deployed Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams from Fairfax County and Los Angeles County to assist in the rescue effort in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

A VA-TF1 team member prepares his gear.

The USAR team from Fairfax County has now departed Washington, DC via commercially chartered aircraft. The flight will stop in Los Angeles to meet that rescue team and then continue on to Japan. The U.S. rescue teams, comprised of approximately 150 personnel and 12 canines trained to detect live victims, are scheduled to arrive on the morning of March 13 in Misawa, Japan. Upon arrival, the teams will immediately begin the search for live victims alongside the Japanese and international search and rescue teams.

USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) is already in Japan and working to coordinate the overall U.S. Government response effort. USAID will continue to provide additional support to the Government of Japan as needed.

USAID

Lance Cpls. Justis Beauregard (far left), a combat correspondent with Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, and Josh Rucker (far right), a reproduction specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, pose with Christina Anderson (center) who injured her ankle while hiking on Mount Woodson in Poway, Calif. The Marines helped splint Anderson's broken ankle with skills they learned in a Marine Corps combat lifesaver course and created and expedient stretcher with their flak jackets to carry her to waiting emergency personnel.

Two Miramar Marines put their medical training to work Monday while hiking in the wooded, rocky terrain of the Mount Woodson summit trail in Poway.

What started out as just regular 10-mile hike for Lance Cpls. Justis Beauregard, a combat correspondent with Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, and Josh Rucker, a reproduction specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, turned out to be one of the most challenging days of their young lives in a quick twist of fate.

Beauregard was navigating the challenging trail wearing a flak jacket with all bulletproof plates inserted, a backpack, Kevlar helmet and his individual first-aid kit. He was training for his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan where he could possibly navigate through similar terrain with a similar load.

As he and Rucker, who was wearing similar gear, began ascending the trail, they encountered a frantic woman desperately searching for a nearby trailhead where she was supposed to meet emergency personnel. She told the Marines her friend was injured and she was supposed to get her to a trailhead for evacuation from the area. The Marines quickly sprinted up the trail to begin see if they could help.

The Marines found Christine Anderson sitting on a rock holding her foot and it became obvious to Beauregard that the Marines were in a real-world scenario. In order to help, the Marines had to use skills they had yet to need outside of standard training. He referred back to his newly acquired combat lifesaver skills he learned in his pre-deployment training and went to work.

He removed her sock, assessing the wound. It was obvious Anderson’s ankle was broken. Beauregard wrapped the ankle with an ACE bandage, then splinted it with a stick he broke into two, 6-inch pieces and the triangular bandages and combat reinforcement tape from his IFAK.

“My combat lifesaver course made me confident and helped me communicate easily with the medical personnel,” said Beauregard. “It’s the first time I’ve really been able to put something I’ve learned in training to use to actually help someone in real life.”

Rucker constructed an expedient stretcher by stretching the Marines’ flak jackets between two 6-foot logs. The two Marines carefully placed Anderson onto the stretcher and carried her through a mile of terrain so austere the waiting park officials could not access it with their all-terrain vehicles.

On the way down, they met 1st Lt. Dwight J. Silva, a student at Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101, and his friend, who happened to be hiking along the same trail. Silva and his friend immediately offered their assistance carrying the stretcher.

When they arrived at the rendezvous point where emergency crews and the park rangers were waiting, firefighters examined Beauregard’s makeshift splint, decided it would suffice and loaded her on to the park rangers’ all-terrain vehicle.

“We knew we had done something right when the firefighters told us the splint ‘wasn’t pretty but it did the job’ and they were not going to replace it,” said Beauregard.

Although the Marines were simply trying to condition their bodies for the mountains of Afghanistan, fate forced them to act in a real emergency. Anderson repeatedly referred to the Marines as “her angels,” but the pair maintain they were just being Marines.

“Any Marine with this skill set would have done exactly what we did for her,” said Rucker. “That’s just what Marines do.”

DVIDS
Story by Cpl. Ryan Rholes

Elizabeth Chacon is a Northridge, Calif. native, and medical specialist attached to the 1038th Horizontal Construction Company, 1st Squadron, 152nd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Sustainment Brigade; and the last time she was at home with her family was in February 2007.

Back home, her job as a medical attendant with a private ambulance company out of Hollywood was filled with excitement. She would often ride in the back of the ambulance with patients as they were transported to the hospital, or she would stand by on the set of an independent movie or television show during filming just in case there was a medical emergency. At night, she would hang out in clubs around Hollywood, and even circuit parties that would last all night.

However, that fast-paced life changed dramatically once she was deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. She worked as a chemical operations specialist for the 1113th Transportation Company, and eventually became part of the company’s supply section, where she was solely responsible for maintaining all the combat lifesaver bags.

Once the mission was complete and it was time to come home, Chacon volunteered to extend, but on one condition – she would get to work in her primary military occupational skill as a healthcare specialist or medic.

“It boils down to the fact that I wanted to be deployed and actually do what I’m passionate about. I love being a medic and hope to advance in the medical field. I’ll also admit that aside from the fact that I love my job, I’m hoping to save up some extra money for school and to hopefully buy a house when I get home,” said Chacon.

One of her most significant assignments, besides being a healthcare specialist, is that she gets tasked out to go on Deliberate Combat Logistics Patrols and serve as the convoy medic. So far, she has completed nine different missions and traveled to various military camps around Iraq.

“I basically roll out with a gun truck crew as the convoy medic. If anything happens on the road, it is my responsibility to respond and provide medical attention. If my guys have any small gripes or complaints that I can treat, then I do and if not, I’ll assess how serious it is and advise them as what to do next, whether it is go to the [Troop Medical Clinic] wherever we are or to just wait until we get back to Taji to get checked out,” Chacon stated.

Not long after extending, she was moved to Camp Taji and assigned to the Easy Red Troop Medical Clinic, where she does a variety of different jobs. In the screening rooms, she takes vitals such as blood pressure, temperature, and pulse and also annotates the reason for the patients’ visit before they are seen by the military physicians.

At the pharmacy, Chacon fills prescriptions according to whatever the doctors prescribe. This task involves creating the label and counting out pills or tablets to ensure patients get the proper amount of medicine.

When assigned to the treatment rooms, she assists the physicians in whatever they may need such as giving a hand with stitches, changing dressings, giving shots, and performing blood draws.

Chacon also gets supplies that the physicians may need or she will just watch how they examine patients in order to learn. These are only a few different areas within the Troop Medical Clinic that Chacon works in on occasion.

She stands as a bona fide, true role model that absolutely loves her military job and shows her devotion to the U.S. Army every day. After 16 months of being deployed, she is still charging hard and is even looking for another possible deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

DVIDS
By Staff Sgt. James E. Brown Jr.
1st Sustainment Brigade

Two new first-aid products being sent into the combat theater could save more Soldiers’ lives, Army medical officials said at a Pentagon news conference on Oct. 15, 2008.

Test results from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Institute of Surgical Research showed Combat Gauze field bandages and WoundStat granules both demonstrated marked improvements over what’s currently used in the field, Army Col. (Dr.) Paul Cordts of the Army surgeon general’s office said.

“These products improve survival, result in less blood loss and improved post-injury blood pressures,” he said.

Excessive blood loss is the No. 1 killer on the battleground, Cordts, a surgeon, said. Both products can stop bleeding quickly in wounds where tourniquets can’t be used, he said.

Combat Gauze uses kaolin, a fine, white clay, to stop bleeding, Cordts said, and WoundStat granules react with blood to form a barrier, preventing more bleeding.

More than 92 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan survive their injuries in combat – the highest percentage of any war, according to the U.S. Army Medical Department. Army Master Sgt. Horace Tyson, a combat medic, said he attributes the high number of people being saved to the advanced tools the Army provides medics, such as dressings that stop or slow blood flow from wounds.

Having recently returned from a 15-month assignment in Iraq as the senior enlisted manager in a battalion aid station in the heart of Baghdad, Tyson said, he saw first-hand the benefits of dressings with blood-clotting capabilities.

“I categorize these products as lifesavers for us,” said Tyson, who now works as a senior operations manager for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

A servicemember can bleed to death within minutes of being hurt, Tyson said.

“The bandages make the difference between a [soldier] having no chance of living because he’ll bleed out in five minutes vs. me getting him to an aid station within 20 minutes and him staying alive,” Tyson said. “Without the bandages, he could be dead.”

With 19 years of experience and four deployments in conflict areas under his belt, Tyson said, he’s seen the Army’s scientific research drastically improve medics’ tools and training.

“If we’re going to get something else better for the battlefield, that’s great,” he said.

About 270,000 12-foot strips of Combat Gauze are expected to be in theater by the end of the year, said Lt. Col. Sean Morgan from Program Executive Office Soldier, the agency fielding most of the bandages. More than 17,000 packages of WoundStat also will be working their way to the field, he said.

The new dressings are expected not only to save more lives, but also to bring significant cost savings to the government, Cordts said. Combat Gauze is less than $30 per dressing, compared to the currently used HemCon bandage, which uses chitosan from shrimp shells to stop blood and costs $88 per bandage. WoundStat also is less expensive than the QuikClot granules it replaces.

The Army plans to equip combat lifesavers to carry three gauzes, and eventually all soldiers will have one in their improved first aid kits. Combat medics, who are highly trained in emergency trauma, will be given three gauzes, but will be the only ones to carry WoundStat, since it requires more medical expertise to use, Cordts said.

Although the new hemostatic dressings are promising great improvements, Dr. David Baer, ISR’s director of surgical research, said it doesn’t mean the Army isn’t still looking for the next line of products that could offer even more improvements.

ISR scientists looked into about two dozen other products in the last few years before they discovered Combat Gauze and WoundStat, and they will continue their efforts for even more cutting-edge products to save lives, he said.

“The way I think about it is the HemCon was better than the plain gauze, [Combat Gauze] is better than the HemCon, and it can get incrementally better,” Baer said.

DVIDS
By Sarah Maxwell
American Forces Press Service

Navy Lieutenant Tony A. Wade (left), an STP trauma nurse and Jacksonville, N.C., native, bandages a wounded Marine as fellow Marines of Company F, TF 2/7, remove him from the Mobile Trauma Bay after being wounded in a firefight with members of the Taliban. (Photo by Navy Hospitalman Dan K. Marker)

Corpsman Up! It’s a simple phrase used by Marines in combat to let corpsmen fighting alongside them know they need help, and FAST.

Since the Marines have been conducting counterinsurgency operations here, this call for help has pierced the air on more than one occasion.

As they take the fight to the insurgents on a near constant basis, the Marines of Company F, Task Force 2d Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Afghanistan rely heavily on their Navy brethren.

Thankfully, they are equipped with some of the best corpsmen available.

The corpsmen attached to Fox Company are members of the task force’s Shock Trauma Platoon (STP). The STP is comprised of two medical doctors, two nurses, a physician assistant and 14 corpsmen chosen from various military units around the world. The STP specializes in providing trauma care on the scene, and Afghanistan’s austere environment has made it increasingly more challenging for the corpsmen to perform their duties. Nonetheless, the corpsmen serving here in support of Operation Enduring Freedom are committed to a common goal – saving lives and keeping Marines “in the fight.”

To fulfill its life-saving mission, the STP has implemented a new concept that has greatly enhanced its ability to provide more expedient medical care to the Marines serving on the frontlines. Because travelling a short distance to transport wounded Marines through the rocky and hilly terrain can literally take hours, the STP saw fit to create the Mobile Trauma Bay (MTB) to administer care faster.

Through the use of military equipment and medical materials made readily available, the “docs” are now better equipped to help Marines return to the fight.

“We took a flatbed 7-ton truck an ISO container and an AC unit, and turned it into a Mobile Trauma Bay that would rival any emergency room back in the states,” said Cmdr. James L. Hancock, STP senior medical officer and Illiopolis, Ill., native. “It’s hard to believe I wrote the idea down on a napkin and after a few phone calls with some contractors, had it built.”

Affectionately referred to as a “Doc-in-a-box,” the MTB is basically an E.R. (emergency room) on wheels. It is equipped with the medical equipment necessary for the STP to treat wounds that would normally be untreatable on the battlefield. It comes with equipment such as an ultrasound machine that helps the medical personnel locate shrapnel in the body. Among a long list of other medical equipment, the MTB also has an electrocardiogram that shows how the heart is functioning – critical for diagnostic procedures and evalutions; and a pulse-oximeter that shows oxygen saturation of arterial blood necessary to check for normal lung function in a patient.

“We bring advanced medical care to the fight,” said Navy Hospitalman 2nd Class Rudy R. Estrada, STP surgical technician and San Diego, Calif., native. “With the types of injuries we’re seeing, having the MTB with us is a huge asset. Having the advanced equipment so close to the fight has saved a lot of lives.”

A wounded Marine’s chance of survival is increased exponentially if they reach medical care within the first 60 minutes of the injury or what the docs refer to as the “golden hour.” The golden hour represents the time from the point of injury to the time the patient receives treatment.

“With the capabilities we have, we can extend the golden hour to several hours instead of just one,” Estrada explained. “One of the biggest things we bring to the fight is the psychological aspect. The Marines know that if they get injured, the doc is right over their shoulder like a guardian angel.”

Having the additional support of the MTB makes fighting with the enemy less stressful for Fox Company Marines because they know help is close by.

“When I first told my Marines where we were going, one of the first questions they asked was, ‘How far away will we be from medical facilities?’” said Capt. Ross Schellhaas, company commander and Meridian, Idaho native. “You saw a collective sigh of relief from all of the Marines as they realized we would have an E.R. doctor and his team of corpsmen so far forward with us.”

Pleased with the STP’s performance, the company commander said he felt proud to have the sailors serving with Fox Company Marines.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of folks that represent Navy medicine the way our STP has,” Capt. Schellhaas said. “We have several corpsmen out here that have earned multiple Purple Hearts for their efforts in trying to save Marines. The STP will do everything it can to help a Marine who’s down, even if that means putting themselves in harm’s way.”

Fox Company Marines understand the importance of having the STP with them because of the difficult situations the Marines have faced since deploying here in early April.

“The situations we get in here are more complex than a single corpsman can handle,” said Lance Cpl. Brandon W. Besendorfer, infantryman and Golden City, Mo., native. “You know if you get hurt, the STP will be there for you. That makes it a little easier going into combat knowing that they will do whatever they can to make sure you make it home.”

Marine Corps
By Cpl. James M. Mercure
2nd Battalion, 7th Marines