Africa's Commandos - new book on the RLI

[JMA]

How good was the training given in medic school? How was the first aid/combat care organized later in the war? In this example it seems that one of the stick, the author, was able to give quickly competent help. The whole stick performed according to this account well, doing seemingly a pretty good job.

With both lungs collapsed the chances of survival should have been very small indeed, especially there and then.

Thanks

I will follow this reply with extracts from an article by a medic.

The medical training (we long since had stopped calling it "first-aid" training because of the advanced nature of how the training had developed) started during recruit training, followed by continuity training at any chance we had, then a structure 5-day course run by qualified medics for stick/Troop medics. The MA3 (medical assistant class 3) course was a three month course.

As stated by the RMO in post #6 of this thread by that later stages of the war we were able to clear casualties back to the MRU (mobile resuscitation unit) with 10 mins or to a local district hospital subject to flying time from the contact area.

To give you an example of what we (in the RLI) aimed for was a universal competence in dealing with the ABCDDE (Airways, Bleeding, Chest-wound, Drips, Drugs, Evacuation) process of stabilisation prior to casevac I attach a citation of an award made to one of my National Service (conscript) troopies after he had moved onto the Reserve. He had received no special medical training only what he got in recruit training and in the troop.

30 years after the fact I asked him whether the training - we (my sergeant and I) had to sometimes drag them out of their billets to do - was worthwhile when viewed in retrospect he replied, "I guess so."



There were a few problems, one was that when we took casualties other troopies rushed to help their fallen mates (often very close friends) placing themselves in the same line of fire that got their mate and reducing the rate of fire being returned.

The other was when their mate had a fatal wound they continued to attempt resuscitation after all hope was gone. Can't blame them. They at least had the basic skills to "do something" rather than just watch their mate die while not being able to do anything.