Review: Combat Lifesaver Class – ‘Heart Attack’
MVT CLS Class OPFOR Review: Heart Attack
The Combat Life Saver Class is one of the few, perhaps the only MVT classes where the OPFOR (Opposing Force i.e. enemy) are permitted to attend the Classroom portion of the class. I greatly appreciated this as the information in this class is highly valuable. It also enabled the OPFOR to better play the part of the wounded. From my prospective this is one of the classes that must be taken to be tactically proficient.
Friday was dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of MARCH which is an acronym for each of the steps that you must follow to better the odds the survival for the wounded in a combat scenario. At each of the steps of MARCH, the students were given an explanation of the step by the instructors, along with a informational video. Depending upon the step, all of the students had to practice treating the wounded. One of the most memorable examples was stabbing a rack of ribs to get the feel for using a decompression need correctly.
Saturday and Sunday featured a mix of classroom and field exercises. The exercises varied from the OPFOR functioning simply as the wounded, with the students having to employ MARCH to save them, to firefights where the students had to deal with ambushes while treating casualties resulting from the ambush.
There were two key things which I took away from the class. The first is that trying to marry causality care in the midst of a combat scenario is very difficult . There where times when the students could only focus upon the tactics to the detriment of the wounded and there were times when the students were so focused upon the treating the wounded that they were oblivious to OPFORs QRF (Quick Reaction Force) barreling down on them. Combining tactics and care for the wounded is a skill the must be practiced and must not be neglected.
The second thing I took away from the class was how ignorant I was of the medical side of fighting. It is easy in the mind to imagine that, whether it is a battle or a self defense situation, that so long as you focus upon being proficient in tactics, you are good to go. It is too easy to neglect the notion that you or your friends or family could be wounded. It is also easy to think that simply having an IFAK is enough. The reality is that without learning the subject matter taught by CLS, the IFAK will be as useful as having a rifle and not training with it.
This is the sort of class that would be good to take multiple times and I hope to attend the class as a student next year.