Army First Aid



The soldier who returns home from the battlefield brings with him the training of his Army first aid. At first, he's not sure when he wakes if he is in a danger zone where he might be shot and killed, or if he has already died and gone to place far away from the violence and blasts of machine gun fire and bombs exploding. Back at home, he wakes each day and measures the morning silence on a scale the stretches to infinity. The birds singing are a requite from the bloody stumps and bodies blown to pieces, strewn among the carnage of the injured and dying.



But here he will have a skill set learned by experience, pounded into his brain by intense training. If he was unlucky, he gained experience by bandaging up his buddies who were shot, stepped on a mine, or injured by flying shrapnel from an exploding bomb. The knowledge he has can be shared in civilian life as he tracks the concrete and asphalt jungle with his neophyte friends who have never been initiated in the horrors of war.

Per chance he will for the remainder of his life avoid all contact with injured persons. But on the other hand, there is the likelihood that an accident, whether it be traffic or industrial, or even perhaps a simple mishap, will result in the awakening of his training to deliver first aid to a casualty as a first line of medical attention. He'll go through the list of 8 things that are required to evaluate the injured: responsiveness, breathing, pulse, bleeding, shock, fractures, burns, and possible concussions (head injuries).

He has trained long and hard, and the experiences have prepared him so that he does not become queasy at the sight of blood or intestines protruding from the abdominal wound. A broken limb will not turn his stomach, even if it is compound and bones are jutting from the a twisted and mangled limb. The simple fracture, having turned swollen and discolored with purple and blue, is as common as a daisy to this out of uniform soldier.

When coming upon the accident victim, he will take charge because he knows that the fools around him will look and gawk, not knowing that the ABCs of first aid begin by opening the airway and restarting breathing. He'll next stop the bleeding and protect the wound, and then prevent shock. Doing these three things, and doing them in this order, is the best way to prevent an injured person from dying. Relieving pain and preventing infection are objects of first aid that he will not overlook as a compassionate and diligent caregiver.

Armed Forces Reserve Medal