Since the beginning of April, Czech tactical medicine specialists have been moving around Ukraine alongside army units, teaching soldiers how to perform first aid. As the doctor with the code name Taylor told Czech Radio recently from the Poltava region, the development of the war fully affects his program.
“It is about operational medicine, or tactical medicine, that is, firefights and battles, with all that that entails, and so far in Ukraine we have had to solve everything on the fly, depending on the possibilities of the unit with which we were and the development of the war, because it is a normal war, not a low-intensity conflict like when we were in Afghanistan. Everything happens unexpectedly, very quickly. So the normal thing has always been that, for example, 15 people had to come to training and 150 arrived. Or the other way around, that soldiers from two units had to arrive and only one arrived because the other had been deployed.”
Taylor estimates that since April they have trained more than 2,000 soldiers. Czech doctors are fully equipped, even with a wide variety of what could be called props, imitating, for example, open fractures in a leg, a burst eye or intestines protruding from the womb. These objects are put on by the soldier who plays the wounded during training. A horrific show with all intents and purposes, explains Taylor.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty, if it were, it wouldn’t prepare soldiers for what they’re going to find in actual battle, which isn’t pretty at all. The stress at such times is huge and plays a very important role. Many things happen in a very short space of time and orienting yourself and making the right decision is very complicated. That’s why we try to make the conditions as realistic as possible.”
Soldiers learn, for example, to put a tourniquet on their arm or leg in less than 35 seconds.
The training consists of two phases. In the first they are taught that in the red zone of battle, the worst, the most important thing is to know how to save oneself to begin with. The second is to help others, remove the wounded and find room to maneuver on the battlefield, take them to a safe space to be able to perform first aid without putting their own lives at risk. You can’t forget either, explains Taylor, that in this battle context, the wounded comrade may not recognize who is going to help him and can use his weapon against him. The soldiers also learn to deal with this in the courses, which are held in English with a translator for those who do not understand it well.