Eight of 200 earn Army’s top medical badge

[SR-25]

By Michael E. Dukes

May 12, 2005

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. (Army News Service, May 12, 2005) -- About 200 candidates showed up May 1 from across the nation, but at the end of the week, only eight of them earned the Expert Field Medical Badge.

"It's one of the most difficult badges to earn in the Army," said Sgt. Maj. Everett Bivens, of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command operations section. "Now, with Iraq and everything else going on, it's more important than ever for them to excel at taking care of the fallen on the battlefield."

Over the past 20 years, more than 95,000 Soldiers have competed for the highly coveted badge, but only about 21 percent actually succeeded, according to Sgt. 1st Class Brian Chase, of Army Medical Command's EFMB Testing Control Office.

Successful EFMB candidates must first pass a 100-question written test. After passing the written test, candidates must complete a series of hands-on field exercises including proper evacuation of sick and wounded, emergency medical treatment, and various common skills tasks. They must also complete a litter obstacle course, as well as a day and night land navigation course. The final challenge successful candidates faced was a grueling, 12-mile road march.

During the first step of the process, only 86 passed the written test at this year's EFMB testing site at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. While most of the candidates were from the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command, Soldiers from as far away as California showed up to compete for the badge.

After having shown mastery of their profession on paper, the next step of the testing would see if the remaining Soldiers could put their money where their mouths were -- to prove they had the skill and stamina to prove their proficiency in the field.

While evaluators hurried the candidates through their tasks, explosions shook the trees around them, small arms fire erupted from every direction, and plumes of colored smoke billowed into the air.

Screams for help echoed through the forest as simulated casualties lay waiting for the candidates to assist them. The casualties suffered from a variety of battlefield wounds -- everything from open chest wounds and possible spinal injuries to Soldiers experiencing combat shock or post traumatic stress disorder.

During a survival component, evaluators presented candidates with a life-like scenario to negotiate through:

A helicopter was down somewhere on the hillside and the survivors on the ground needed to be rescued. However, there was a hostile enemy force in the area using small arms weapons, grenades and chemical weapons against anyone who tried to rescue to survivors of the crash.

The steep hills were rocky, fallen leaves and branches covered the ground, and it was muddy -- all making for a tricky environment for the candidates to negotiate. Halfway up the hill, candidates dropped prone after machinegun fire caught them off guard. They returned fire as they scanned the hillside for the enemy.

When purple smoke appeared around them, an evaluator informed them that they had just been the victims of a chemical attack. In mere seconds, they had their gas masks in place. Then they proceeded outside the affected area, where they quickly decontaminated themselves.

After a series of additional tasks, they eventually found the wounded Soldiers from the helicopter crash. To get the casualties down the hill to an awaiting duce-and-a-half truck, evaluators asked them to first use a firefighter carry to move a fallen Soldier. Next, they were asked to drag them.

After they reached the awaiting truck, they were ordered to properly load the casualties into the bed of the truck.

During a litter obstacle course, a team of four candidates carried a Soldier on a litter over a variety of obstacles including a low and a high wall, a low-crawl under barbed wire, a series of narrow bridges, rocky and muddy hills, and a trench with waist-deep water.

As if the obstacle course wasn't difficult enough, there were enemy ambushes at various points along the way. While rifle fire and simulated grenades went off from all around them, colored smoke obscured their view of the path ahead.

At the end of each day, worn and battered Soldiers wearily made their way back to their base camp for chow and the comfort of their cots and tents.

Each day, the number of candidates competing for the badge shrank. Spirit and morale were tested, but the Soldiers pushed on.



After the final day of the field tasks, with only the road march remaining, only a handful of candidates remained. Of the nine candidates who started the march that morning, only one dropped out.

"Unfortunately the Soldier couldn't make it past the 10 and a half mile point," Bivens said.

Standing in formation May 5, awaiting the award of their hard-earned badges, eight of the original 200 candidates could now call themselves expert field medics.

(Editor’s note: Michael E. Dukes is the acting assistant editor of Stripes newspaper at Walter Reed.)

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