Make the Right Diagnosis
1983: Fort Hunter-Liggett, California for Annual training. Hot, dry and dusty. We arrived on air conditioned busses and were ordered to road march (by foot) a couple of miles to our bivouac area in order to condition the troops to the heat. A couple of miles with rucksacks, B bags and all other cargo. No provision at all for the excess gear; this is why grunts love higher headquarters so much. They were expected to carry everything on their backs, with no real opportunity for real acclimatization. Battalion staff had their jeeps to climb into, of course; and the Battalion commander had his air conditioned staff car.
The company XO tracked down the mortar section vehicles (gamma goats) and drafted them to carry as much of the individual gear as possible. He stacked his own jeep and trailer until the springs didn’t spring anymore and we started shuttling gear.
Surprisingly enough, we only had one casualty on this march; an overweight Staff Sergeant who collapsed and couldn’t continue. With no medic available and no hospital designated, we hoped it wasn’t a heart attack but ended up fortunate that he was simply exhausted. We just stacked him on top of the XO’s overloaded jeep.
Once the exercise proper started, we began having regular heat casualties; one or two or three a day. Only one of these was heat stroke, fortunately. By that time, the guys had gotten very familiar with symptoms and recognized the trouble he was in. We got a Medevac bird in and sent him out of there.
The rest of the casualties were ’simple’ heat exhaustion. This being the days before combat lifesavers; indeed, before our medics were allowed to carry IV fluids during training, the treatment was primitive. Pour water on the guy to cool him down, give him a short rest and redistribute his gear so that he could keep up.
The last casualty was like all those before it except for one detail. By now, the troops were reacting a bit too automatically. They had his clothes, boots and gear loosened and soaked him down with water before the XO even realized he was down. Excellent immediate action drill, except that it was nearly midnight and the temperature was a good forty degrees lower than it had been during the day. Thus, his diagnosis wasn’t HEAT exhaustion; it was simple exhaustion, from nine days of heat, heavy loads and constant marches. The secondary diagnosis was now hypothermia caused by over enthusiastic mis treatment.
He was last seen wrapped in every spare article of clothing the XO had, stuffed in the back of the jeep and on his way back to the aid station. He came out just fine but that drive was another adventure all on its own…..