Day 19

Well today did not start out to early for us because platoons 3-6 had their APFT this morning. All of our morning classes dealt with Army writing and presentation. We covered the format for exactly how the Army wants us to write our orders, presentation and correspondence. Everything has become short, to the point, with active language and with the main idea first. The gentleman also covered how much information is lost between face to face and written communication and reported that their research shows that only 5% of the order given will make it down to the lowest person and be retained after 1 day, so hopefully that is the 5% they need to know to get the job done. We also covered communication and the way we communicated outside of verbal and how important it is to pay attention to the signs we are showing as officers and leaders. There was a lot more information we covered in this section about writing, proof reading and body language, but I won't get into all that here because he covered 6 hours of lecture in 4 hours and it was a lot. After lunch we were split up into our individual platoons. There we started to cover roles of care (1-4) and what goes on in each role how patients are moved throughout and how roles are filled, supplies are stocked and restocked. This section was very interesting, as well as very overwhelming because of the amount of information that we were give, because we started talking about our individuals AOC's (Area's of Concentration) and where we might find ourselves along the way. We also talked about setting up medical cache at the front line and moving back to the role I and II areas, because these are the roles that are most dynamic (read moveable.) We covered setting up a role II medical area and the layout for how you would want everything set up, including the triage of soldiers. One interesting part and something that I think a lot of people had trouble with was that we treat our EPOW's (Enemy Prisoners of War) and must triage them in as well. Meaning if you had a EPOW that was triaged as more important than one of your soldiers (or he had just killed some of your soldiers) you would have to treat them before you treated your own. This was a tough thing to think about, but it is something we are required to do no matter how we feel about it. Well I need to get going because it is late and we have another long day tomorrow. Thankfully it should continue to be good material. I only wished we had more time to digest it all because everything we are learning seems very good to know and very important to remember.