comment on good old days

[rationtin440]

I'm posting this off-topic because I noticed myself starting to wander a bit, and I wanted to keep from drifting too far. Anyway, noderaser's reply made me recall that in the army national guard (at least this is how it seemed to be during the cold war and for years after), medics were basically responsible for making sure that soldiers did not do stupid stuff in the field, like having contests to see how long they could go without having to dig a cat-hole, and---well---if one drinks enough coca-cola and eats certain MCI or MRE stuff, I'm sure the results are easy to figure out. noderaser's comment was right on, and it would get pretty ridiculous after awhile to constantly have to remind people to drink enough water, don't eat too much of the wrong kind of food, etc. and then to be called to task and asked why you can't convince the platoon that you're assigned to as a medic to stop doing dumb @#$% and use common sense. Of course I still loved my job and I really cared about all the troops my ambulance crew and I were assigned to, eventhough they could drive us crazy.

[housil]

s my ambulance crew and I were assigned to, eventhough they could drive us crazy.

Do you have any pictures from that time? As a paramedic, I´m interested in any Ambulance related thing.

[rationtin440]

Unfortunately housil I don't. The house we were living in in 2001 burned and we lost everything including a %^&*-load of photos from my ambulance section at the unit I was assigned to. There are so many advances from the M-998 Hummer ambulance vehicles from the last years of the cold war and even Desert Storm. Now they have Stryker armored ambulances but I'm not sure where you'd be able to get pics of them. Needless to say a person cannot be very tall and expect a reasonable ride even in the Stryker, but from photos I've seen on the internet they are at least better protected than even the M-113 ambulance tracks we had. Your best bet might be to check out Janes fighting /support vehicles on-line, or depending on how close you live to any U.S. units that may still be in your neck of the woods, they are usually pretty friendly and if you mention your paramedic training they'll probably give you a good tour. Word to the wise: U.S. Army units have the coolest vehicles and "stuff" but the U.S. Air Force medical units are the friendliest, and most of the U.S. air bases in your area have pretty well-equipped crash/paramedic/disaster prep units. Hope this helps.

[housil]

I´m very sorry for your lost...

Too bad most US installations are closed over here. We had to deal with lot´s of US troops as we had three US installations and the second biggest US hospital (outside the USA).

That´s the only video I could take from that time


I have nice pic´s of nice armored ambulances, but I´d like to "hear" first had stories.

[rationtin440]

Thank you for your response housil. I have always felt like you were and are a caring friend ever since I first joined MREforums. Unfortunately I have memory issues from Desert Storm and alot of what we did over there with our ambulances is hard for me to recollect.

[rationtin440]

Sorry this did not make it into my reply for some reason, but that was a cool video clip. Do you recall when approximately that was because the U.S. troops are wearing the cold-war era camo BDUs. What I do recall is treating mostly Iraqi soldiers who surrendered, a few cases of depression, but what took me a long time to get over was when we responded to the incident when the Scud warhead broke up and fell on the apartment building in Dhahran Saudi Arabia on 25 Feb. 1991 in which 25 U.S. soldiers were killed and3 others died from their injuries within a couple days. I'm curious what support and other services are available for Bundeswehr veterans who have trouble with PTSD and other service related stuff?

[housil]

Do you recall when approximately that was because the U.S. troops are wearing the cold-war era camo BDUs.

That was in Dec 2004