Car bomb exercise completes Iraqi medic trauma training

By Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod
1st BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. PAO

	Photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod/1st BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. PAO Corporal Hassan, a medic with the 7th Iraqi Army Division, applies a tourniquet to a patient with a simulated amputation during a mass-casualty training exercise. As the triage noncommissioned officer in charge, Hassan must evaluate which of the 25 simulated injuries get treated and evacuated first.

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq — Iraqi army medics participated in a mass-casualty training exercise near here June 3 as a final test following months of training by U.S. Army medics.
Medics from three clinics — 7th Iraqi Army Division, Field Engineer Regiment and Motor Transportation Regiment — triaged and evacuated 25 casualties of a simulated vehicle-borne improvised explosive device at the 7th IA division headquarters dining facility at Camp Mejid, an IA base adjacent to Al Asad Air Base.

The exercise was planned, organized and directed by medics of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, who have been mentoring the Iraqi medics since August 2009.
“As in our Army, their medics will disseminate to the different brigades and divisions, and that training knowledge will go with them and spread throughout the entire Iraqi army,” said Capt. Kyle Brown, assistant operations officer and Iraqi Security Forces coordinator for 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st BCT, 82nd Abn. Div.

“Having the 307th BSB here is critical for the IA. These ‘soft’ skills the Iraqi Army needs to sustain themselves are absolutely critical. They lack that expertise in the army, and we’re here to show them how to do it for themselves,” said Brown.
The training was designed to mimic an actual bombing that occurred on an Iraqi base in 2005 that killed 65 soldiers and wounded more than 250, staff Brig. Gen. Ismaeel Khalif al-Khalifawi, commander of 7th IA Division said, following the event.
“As an army, we should have every means to prevent such an incident from happening on our bases,” said Ismaeel.
Following the blast of several harmless “flash-bang” grenades, a busload of Iraqi soldiers made up with mock injury kits and fake blood, moved to the foot of the dining facility and pretended to be injured. Simulated amputees were fitted with devices that appeared to be bleeding stumps that squirted fake blood. Many soldiers yelled in mock pain.
It was all designed to stress the medics, said Staff Sgt. Tiari Ventura, senior medical adviser for the 7th IA Division medics and organizer of the event.

The Iraqi medics’ response to the blast was entirely professional, she said.

“They went to the people who had massive bleeding first so they wouldn’t bleed out,” said Ventura. “Then they moved their patients to separate the ones that were more serious. They loaded their most serious patients last so they’d come off the vehicle first when they got to the hospital.”

Ventura said the IA medics have made great strides during her unit’s time with them. Iraqi medics typically receive about 25 days of training, as compared to a U.S. Army medic’s 16 weeks.

While the Iraqis were very good at treating individual trauma cases, they struggled with the concept of triage, or separating and prioritizing casualties based upon severity of injury.

“We go with the DIME concept,” said Sgt. Michael Stewart, whose job was to shadow Cpl. Hassan, the Iraqi triage noncommissioned officer in charge.

DIME stands for delayed, immediate, minimal and expectant, and is used to direct traffic and ensure that the patients are getting the proper treatment, he said.

Fellow medic, Spc. Aubrey Stoda, said the American medics started training the Iraqis for the mass-casualty exercise, or MASCAL, by going through the steps of MARCH — massive bleeding, airway, respiration, circulation and hypothermia and head wounds.

“They were pretty good on it, just as we thought they would be,” said Stoda. “Then we started adding in the triage and evacuation.”

Eventually, American medics brought together all three Iraqi clinics on Camp Mejid for five-patient, 10-patient and 15-patient exercises. The culminating event was the 25-patient MASCAL.
“They just had a threat of someone trying to wear one of their uniforms and coming on this base, so we thought that if something actually happened, we should probably get them ready for handling a MASCAL situation,” said Stoda.

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