Pennsylvania National Guard’s 56th SBCT rehearses air MEDEVAC operations

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — U.S. Soldiers assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania National Guard, participated in an air medical evacuation exercise at Grafenwöhr Training Area, Germany, Oct. 11, 2024.

The rehearsal was a multi-unit effort involving a flight crew assigned to the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade and a complement of combat medic specialists with the 56th SBCT to create a shared understanding and validation of urgent medevac procedures across the training area. The rehearsal required the medics to “hot load” their simulated injured patient onto an HH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, forcing them to operate in a chaotic, loud and windy environment as the helicopter blades continued to spin above them.

Although their final goal was to successfully load the simulated patient onto the HH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, the list of validation tasks that the medics had to demonstrate during this rehearsal began long before submitting the nine-line medevac request to range operations and the HH-60 Black Hawk helicopter arriving on the scene.

Capt. Wylie Gilbert, a medical officer assigned to the 56th SBCT and primary planner for the rehearsal, explained that part of the validation included meeting required timelines for treating and transporting a casualty in an urgent medical emergency.

“We have one hour to get them from the point of injury to a medical facility,” said Gilbert. “It is a very difficult timeline to meet.”

One way to improve invaluable treatment times is to practice point of injury stabilization where the medic provides enough care at the point of injury to stabilize the patient for an hour until they can receive care from a provider in a hospital setting. The flight medic aboard the helicopter then continues the patient’s stabilization effort during the transport to a higher level of medical care.

During the air medevac rehearsal, the 56th SBCT medics demonstrated their ability to meet these time requirements, as they dragged the simulated patient from the point of injury to a safe location while facing care under fire, began filling in their tactical combat casualty care card to document each simulated injury and the treatment provided, and loaded the patient into the ground evacuation platform in the required six minutes. From there, they submitted the nine-line medevac request to the range operations, thus successfully dispatching the HH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to the nearby helicopter landing zone.

The medics practiced this series of treatment and evacuation procedures for a total of four iterations, first with a Rescue Randy, which is a realistic mannequin used for rehearsing medical and rescue situations, before completing the second through fourth iterations with a few of their fellow Soldiers with the 56th SBCT. Each iteration featured different medical situations described on a casualty card, all requiring unique medical expertise to treat with their supplies from the medical aid bags. The simulated medical scenarios ranged from treating a burn or fracture to applying a tourniquet to a gunshot wound. With every iteration that the medical teams completed, their medical emergency response proved to be timely and accurate.

“I saw a lot of smiling faces. Overall, this was an excellent training exercise,” said Gilbert. “It was a huge success.”

The medics are looking forward to their next rehearsal, hopefully to take place later next year, which may include requiring loading the simulated patient onto a hoist.

More information about the 56th SBCT’s mission in Germany can be found here.

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