Medics learn combat environment skills

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LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Even the setting is realistic. Men and women dressed in field and camouflage uniforms, military vehicles and helicopters in evidence everywhere, officers and Airmen hunched over topographical maps and the usual good-natured complaints about the C-rations forming a buzz of background conversation.

Everything around pointed to one conclusion: These are professionals brought to Camp Bullis for a purpose. The purpose of Combat Environment Transitional Training is teaching the skills necessary for savings lives.

If they have to apply these skills it will mean the United States is involved in an armed conflict. It won't be simulators and dummies, it will be hurt and wounded Soldiers and Airmen depending on the proficiency of these people to save their lives.

They are the medics, nurses and doctors of Wilford Hall USAF Medical Center's mobility unit. The unit actually consists of two separate surgical-intensive acute care facilities, one with 500 beds and the other with 250. According to Lt. Col. Jim Leslie, chief of operational planning, the 500-bed unit would be the first in the United States to be sent out in the event of conflict. 

In fact, according to Colonel Leslie, "It will be the only one ready to go," should a crisis arise in the immediate future. When the mobility system is completed, however, it will include 31 500-bed units and three 250-bed units, not including first and second echelon units (aid stations, decontamination stations, etc.)

According to figures obtained from the Medical Programming and Analysis Group, Office of the Air Force Manpower and Personnel Center Surgeon, this means that 84 percent of the medical personnel now on active duty will eventually have to be on mobility status, just to staff the larger 250- and 500-bed units.

The training at Camp Bullis is designed to give mobility members an idea of what a combat environment will be like. In addition to the basics of living in the field, students are taught site preparation, gas mask training, triage, map reading and compass skills, encoding and decoding, marksmanship qualification and radio usage. 

These skills in addition to those taught at Wilford Hall's Red Flag training will form the foundation of information for those who will find themselves in a combat environment for the first time.

After going through the course himself, Wilford Hall commander, Maj. Gen. K. Vandenbos commented, "It would be my desire that everybody on mobility could have this training so that they would know what it means to provide medical care in a bare base environment."

Later this year, the 500-bed unit will send a forward team to RAF Little Rissington, England, for a first look at the site they will occupy in the event of a European conflict. Although a large contingent of the 761 people assigned to the unit was scheduled to participate in Reforger 83, a joint exercise held each year, participation has been deferred for a year.

As for the 250-bed contingency hospital team, plans have not been finalized for the site of their deployment, although they are slated for somewhere in Southwest Asia in support of U.S. Central Command. In Colonel Leslie's words, "We're going somewhere hot, dry and sandy, and it isn't going to be Las Vegas."

According to General Vandenbos, "(Camp Bullis offers) the best training available right at the moment. And it can be done at a reasonable price.  The big problem is that training once a year is not enough. We must train continuously, offer refresher training whenever possible. This is not the end."

Underneath a generous helping of good humor, the people who participate in Combat Environment Transitional Training obviously realize the importance of their mission. They realize that tolerating the sunburn, the bugs, the field conditions may one day translate into a working knowledge of battlefield conditions and ultimately into lives saved.

Editor's note:  this article is reprinted from Wilford Hall Medical Center archive, March, 1983