Re: Those awesome action shots of you and your buddies
Yup, that be me, all then 185# of whoop ass Staff Sergeant. SPC 'Ray Ray' Reaborne next to me, and VC, or 'Silent Bob' as we caled him. That was a very long day. We were about 15 mikes from the end of our day. 11 people hit our point immedietly after a VBIED went off. As the VBIED went BOOM, a multi vehicle crash was already in progress. Now knowing we only saw the VBIED and did the SPOT report for the grid in town, we were ready to leave and head back home. Then they started coming in. We had to triage 11 civilians with various injuries. No1 was a 7 y/o female with the right side of her face ripped off and the flap hanging down by her neck. No2 was a 23y/o female with breathing issues and no visual injuries. 3 was an old woman with a baseball sized divot in her head. The rest were basically scrapes and bruises. Simple IV's, quick check, wait for Doc and his crew to get there(I was a Combat Lifesaver, no dang Paramedic, but it was me and a couple joes so we did what we had to).
We had the bleeding kinda stopped on the kid, stabilized the female and still couldn't find the trauma, the old lady was IV'd and a bandage placed in the small bowl. The rest had IV's two of which I had to kick an incompatent medic out of the way so I could properly initiate adn be done with it.
Three hours later teh 23 y/o died on the CASH table, the kid had stiches with a good prognosis, and we finally left the position after clean up to get back to the huts,
That cigar and the cold Guinness Kaliber were teh best ever. I was freakin toast!
The old lady died three days later, and the rest were sent home with an MRE and a bottle of water each.
If I had ever thought for a minute that one day I would be the Triage Team Leader in a ECP in Afghanistan when I first signed on, I wonder if I would have done it. I never wanted teh responsibiity to be the First Responder. Now, I can do any of that stuff but some days it just drags a guy down when I see or hear stuff that takes me back to that day.