“I have water in my lungs, I have water in my lungs!!! Ahhh…” Lying on the ground, the soldier seems to be in agony. Next to him, two of his comrades are also in bad shape, one of them is unconscious. Two other soldiers are busy identifying their injuries and giving them first aid, just minutes after an ambush. An assailant fired an assault rifle at the infantry section that was patrolling in hostile territory. In the immediate vicinity, four other soldiers are keeping watch and forming a security bubble while waiting for an armoured vehicle to evacuate the wounded. This is a fictional scenario but inspired by feedback from military operations.
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“I have already heard this feeling of water in the lungs on the pitch. I always integrate it into a simulation like this, explains Warrant Officer Yoann from the 15th Army Medical Center (CMA) located in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes. He is speaking to around fifteen 6th year medical students in Rennes, invited on Wednesday, June 26, 2024 to an immersion day in the heart of the camp of the 11th Marine Artillery Regiment (11e RAMa), in Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier (Ille-et-Vilaine). This year, in March, they followed the first edition of this introduction to combat first aid as part of a new optional teaching unit “Health in a military environment” created with the Army Health Service (SSS).
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The program included a little over 20 hours of lessons on infectious risks in external operations, injury mechanisms in war medicine, combat rescue and triage, psychological first aid in operations, missions in a nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical (NRBC) context… All thus learned the “SAFE MARCH RYAN”, a memotechnic acronym for carrying out in the correct order and within a limited time the essential first aid procedures in the extreme conditions of a combat zone. “What happens if the SC2 (combat medic level 2) is injured himself? »asks one of the students. ”The section must reorganize while waiting for reinforcements. We have no choice. It is a very delicate situation, concedes Warrant Officer Yoann, who takes the opportunity to reiterate an absolute rule in a war zone. Two caregivers never ride together in the same vehicle in a convoy. It’s forbidden ! ».
What next for these students? “The future belongs to them. Some may want to join the army health service or as a reservist. explains Professor Renaud Bouvet, head of the forensic medicine and prison medicine department at the Rennes University Hospital. A second class of the optional teaching unit “Health in the military environment” will be trained during the next school year.
