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*********UPDATE *******
THINGS HAVE IMPROVED!!!! Look below for Turkish's detailed recent experience at the new and improved C4. Thanks again to turkish for updating our info! and feel free to add your own experiences after you go as well
*********UPDATE *******
This is GeoLeo and my experience at C4. Take it for what it's worth. (and big thanks for GeoLeo for putting this together)
C4 is a lot like the field experience at OBC. Remember that one hardball road we weren't supposed to cross at OBC? That's because the C4 training area is on the other side. The schedule is pretty stiff:
Thursday arrive in San Antonio, buses take you to Camp Bullis. You have a short registration/inprocessing, change into your uniform, and then a few hours of mind-numbing lectures. There are several buses that leave for Bullis-- if you arrive early, don't take the very next bus-- get some airport restaraunt food before you go.
We had 3 platoons each with 3 squads of 10-12, about 100 total. The best part was the platoon leaders - usually the highest ranking students are reservists, so they have no idea about D&C. My (GeoLeo) platoon leader's invocation to march was "Go ahead now, you guys". My (homunculus)platoon leader was a Coast Guard Dentist. Obviously you're going to have a fun time when it comes to the "admin" aspect of C4, but as long as you go with the flow, you'll be fine.
Despite what the literature from DMRTI says you can take your cell phone and use it at Camp Bullis and Ft. Sam. You are not supposed to bring them to the field, but even some people brought them there. The only carrier with good coverage out at Camp Bullis seemed to be Verizon. I (homunculus) have Cingular and it worked reasonably well. Especially if you got a signal for a short bit and sent out text messages so you weren't talking *too* much on the phone.
Friday-Sunday is a mix of being bussed to Ft. Sam for ATLS and coming back to Camp Bullis for more of the boring lectures. Stay awake! Reveille is usually sometime between 5 and 6. I think that it was 0430 one day. These days you are eating breakfast at the mess hall at Camp Bullis (not that bad really) and can either take an MRE (you buy them Friday evening/saturday monring) or can go snag something at Ft. Sam (usually there is very limited time). At Ft. Sam you are back in those little classrooms where we were for OBC.
ATLS is really quite simple. There are no drugs to memorize dosages on, no EKG's to enterpret, and no physiologic derangements to worry about. It's all ABC, ABC, ABC. They use some "state of the art" mannequins (which are actually fairly nice) to simulate chest tubes, DPL's, cut downs, and central lines in addition the the regular fakeys they use for intubations. The written test is fairly straightforward, and the practical, depending on the instructor, is easy once you get hte practice scenarios down. I actually enjoyed it. (but i;m not sure that the pathologist thought of it, lol)
There is a small shoppette where you can pick up extra field gear, some pogey-bait, booze (good for the last day) or whatever else strikes your fancy. So if you forget something you;re not *completely* out of luck.
Sunday evening (or thereabouts) you are issued your stuff for the field portion - Kevlar helmet and vest, LBE, poncho and liner, nug (fake M16), ruck, and of course, MOPP gear and gas mask.
You would do well to familiarize yourself with assembling and putting on the gas mask. Put the spider strap (tab goes down) and the hood on the mask before you leave for the field. This wasn't relayed to us and there were a few unprepared people. Snug up the spider strap on the top and sides, but leave a little slack on the bottom straps - that way you can put it on quickly. FInd someone in your squad who remembers how to pack the mask into its case for easiest access. There's a trick to rolling the SOB up, lol.
Before leaving for the field you pack up what you aren't taking to the field in a large shipping container that they lock.
They then load you up in a deuce and a half and ship you out to the training area. BE PREPARED - once we all got there and formed up in the formation area they steathily dropped some smoke bombs and we had to get into MOPP4 (the whole magilla - mask, jacket, pants, boots, gloves). Keep your eye on HM2 Ortega - he's the sneaky one. Also, unlike OBC they never use real gas, just smoke bombs.
There's some lectures (they call it "death by powerpoint") in the Posey Dome (a quonset hut where they manage to get Powerpoint presentations done - is nothing sacred?) that night.
During one of the lectures, Ortega went around with his mask on, spraying water from a fire extinguisher. It was supposed to be a gas attack - remember don your mask and hood then yell, "Gas!".
The next few days are a series of training exercises - you do the rappel tower again, more land nav - but it's with your whole squad and PI (each squad is assigned a NCO primary instructor). With the land nav you go to points and then there are evac exercises - removing casualties under fire. It's all pretty fun. There's also a NBC lane where you have to suit up in MOPP again.
For MOPP
1. Be calm, you have plenty of time
2. Close eyes, stop breathing
3. Put on mask and hood (don't snap bottom of hood) in 9 and 15 secs, respectively.
4. Drop all gear
5. Remove MOPP gear from ruck - it helps to keep just your MOPP gear in the ruck in the following order (from bottom to top of bag): boots, jacket (with gloves in pockets), pants.
6. Don MOPP gear - pants, then jacket, then boots, then gloves. Remember pants go over boots and then zip down the side cuff zippers, jacket goes over gloves. Button the three buttons in the back of the jacket/pants to snap them together. After all your gear is on, snap the hood on the gas mask.
7. Put all your gear (Kevlars, LBE, ruck) back on again - you have 8 minutes total, plenty of time.
The last day(s) suck - you awaken around 0500 on Wednesday then do land nav all day. There's some lectures in the evening and finally they let you go around 2000. You are supposed to go to sleep, but they wake up at 0100 (with blaring recorded machine gun fire, lotsa yelling, and general "hurry up, hurry up!!" ness) for the "CONOPS" (Continuous Operations) and you have 5 minutes to get fully dressed, pack up your duffel and load it on a truck then get in formation. You then go through three stages of training, each with several rotations. The scenario is that there is an insurgent rebellion in a country you are liberating. The C4 class is the medical battalion. The stages are:
1. Level 1 (Battalion Aid Station) - where you take turns running and securing a BAS or extricating casualties from a battle zone. They use students to be casualties. Avoid being medic (you'll see a theme here), try to be security - it's more fun. There are some dudes hiding up on the hillside. This is fairly straightforward, because anything bigger than a splinter is going to be sent up to the level II.
2. Level 2 (CSH) - where you are now doing similar tasks, but at a larger scale hospital. Avoid being ER doc, traige officer, Evac nurse, CO/XO, these jobs suck and you get reamed. Security, again, is where the action is. Search the EPW's carefully-- they like to hide all kindsa weapons and grenades on themselves. Also remember to take weapons away from *everyone*-- nothing like a disgruntled C4 student taking out your command wby runing thorugh the tent with an M-16. It's bad form.
3. You get to be the fake patient for the other 2 rotations. Obviously the most fun. Get the squirty arterial bleed stuff. Being EPW's is also fun.
It's pretty cool because all the rotations interact. For example a casualty can be picked up on the battlefield, taken to the level 1, then evaced on to the Level 2. You finish around 1800-1900 on Thursday and head back to the hutments for showers.
One more thing - avoid being the RTO - the CINGARS weighs no less than 30 lbs. We both ended up carrying it the entire time. Try to trade it off among your squadmates. The same goes for the medic bag. Another side effect of the CINGARS is that you are often expected to not only radio the MEDEVAC but prepare it as well. They're easy though, and it's a chance to look good.
They will likely gas you at the Level 1 and Level 2 during the CONOPS.
Also, just when you think the whole thing is over - there is a final exercise on your way back to the hutments on Thursday night. You are in a convoy and there is a simulated IED/road side attack, where some people are in an ambulance and some in a deuce and a half. The ambulance folks have to evac the casualties while the folks in the deuce.5 have to lay suppressive fire. You then get to a rally point, secure the area, and send a 9-line medevac report.
the next day is outprocessing and "graduation". you should be outta there by 12:00 or so. Find someone with a POV to get you the hell out of there as soon as you can go. And grad some Rudy's on your way out--you'll thank us later.
--if you have any other questions feel free to ask them on this thread
--your friendly neighborhood combat peds caveman and your friendly neighborhood combat pathologist
THINGS HAVE IMPROVED!!!! Look below for Turkish's detailed recent experience at the new and improved C4. Thanks again to turkish for updating our info! and feel free to add your own experiences after you go as well
*********UPDATE *******
This is GeoLeo and my experience at C4. Take it for what it's worth. (and big thanks for GeoLeo for putting this together)
C4 is a lot like the field experience at OBC. Remember that one hardball road we weren't supposed to cross at OBC? That's because the C4 training area is on the other side. The schedule is pretty stiff:
Thursday arrive in San Antonio, buses take you to Camp Bullis. You have a short registration/inprocessing, change into your uniform, and then a few hours of mind-numbing lectures. There are several buses that leave for Bullis-- if you arrive early, don't take the very next bus-- get some airport restaraunt food before you go.
We had 3 platoons each with 3 squads of 10-12, about 100 total. The best part was the platoon leaders - usually the highest ranking students are reservists, so they have no idea about D&C. My (GeoLeo) platoon leader's invocation to march was "Go ahead now, you guys". My (homunculus)platoon leader was a Coast Guard Dentist. Obviously you're going to have a fun time when it comes to the "admin" aspect of C4, but as long as you go with the flow, you'll be fine.
Despite what the literature from DMRTI says you can take your cell phone and use it at Camp Bullis and Ft. Sam. You are not supposed to bring them to the field, but even some people brought them there. The only carrier with good coverage out at Camp Bullis seemed to be Verizon. I (homunculus) have Cingular and it worked reasonably well. Especially if you got a signal for a short bit and sent out text messages so you weren't talking *too* much on the phone.
Friday-Sunday is a mix of being bussed to Ft. Sam for ATLS and coming back to Camp Bullis for more of the boring lectures. Stay awake! Reveille is usually sometime between 5 and 6. I think that it was 0430 one day. These days you are eating breakfast at the mess hall at Camp Bullis (not that bad really) and can either take an MRE (you buy them Friday evening/saturday monring) or can go snag something at Ft. Sam (usually there is very limited time). At Ft. Sam you are back in those little classrooms where we were for OBC.
ATLS is really quite simple. There are no drugs to memorize dosages on, no EKG's to enterpret, and no physiologic derangements to worry about. It's all ABC, ABC, ABC. They use some "state of the art" mannequins (which are actually fairly nice) to simulate chest tubes, DPL's, cut downs, and central lines in addition the the regular fakeys they use for intubations. The written test is fairly straightforward, and the practical, depending on the instructor, is easy once you get hte practice scenarios down. I actually enjoyed it. (but i;m not sure that the pathologist thought of it, lol)
There is a small shoppette where you can pick up extra field gear, some pogey-bait, booze (good for the last day) or whatever else strikes your fancy. So if you forget something you;re not *completely* out of luck.
Sunday evening (or thereabouts) you are issued your stuff for the field portion - Kevlar helmet and vest, LBE, poncho and liner, nug (fake M16), ruck, and of course, MOPP gear and gas mask.
You would do well to familiarize yourself with assembling and putting on the gas mask. Put the spider strap (tab goes down) and the hood on the mask before you leave for the field. This wasn't relayed to us and there were a few unprepared people. Snug up the spider strap on the top and sides, but leave a little slack on the bottom straps - that way you can put it on quickly. FInd someone in your squad who remembers how to pack the mask into its case for easiest access. There's a trick to rolling the SOB up, lol.
Before leaving for the field you pack up what you aren't taking to the field in a large shipping container that they lock.
They then load you up in a deuce and a half and ship you out to the training area. BE PREPARED - once we all got there and formed up in the formation area they steathily dropped some smoke bombs and we had to get into MOPP4 (the whole magilla - mask, jacket, pants, boots, gloves). Keep your eye on HM2 Ortega - he's the sneaky one. Also, unlike OBC they never use real gas, just smoke bombs.
There's some lectures (they call it "death by powerpoint") in the Posey Dome (a quonset hut where they manage to get Powerpoint presentations done - is nothing sacred?) that night.
During one of the lectures, Ortega went around with his mask on, spraying water from a fire extinguisher. It was supposed to be a gas attack - remember don your mask and hood then yell, "Gas!".
The next few days are a series of training exercises - you do the rappel tower again, more land nav - but it's with your whole squad and PI (each squad is assigned a NCO primary instructor). With the land nav you go to points and then there are evac exercises - removing casualties under fire. It's all pretty fun. There's also a NBC lane where you have to suit up in MOPP again.
For MOPP
1. Be calm, you have plenty of time
2. Close eyes, stop breathing
3. Put on mask and hood (don't snap bottom of hood) in 9 and 15 secs, respectively.
4. Drop all gear
5. Remove MOPP gear from ruck - it helps to keep just your MOPP gear in the ruck in the following order (from bottom to top of bag): boots, jacket (with gloves in pockets), pants.
6. Don MOPP gear - pants, then jacket, then boots, then gloves. Remember pants go over boots and then zip down the side cuff zippers, jacket goes over gloves. Button the three buttons in the back of the jacket/pants to snap them together. After all your gear is on, snap the hood on the gas mask.
7. Put all your gear (Kevlars, LBE, ruck) back on again - you have 8 minutes total, plenty of time.
The last day(s) suck - you awaken around 0500 on Wednesday then do land nav all day. There's some lectures in the evening and finally they let you go around 2000. You are supposed to go to sleep, but they wake up at 0100 (with blaring recorded machine gun fire, lotsa yelling, and general "hurry up, hurry up!!" ness) for the "CONOPS" (Continuous Operations) and you have 5 minutes to get fully dressed, pack up your duffel and load it on a truck then get in formation. You then go through three stages of training, each with several rotations. The scenario is that there is an insurgent rebellion in a country you are liberating. The C4 class is the medical battalion. The stages are:
1. Level 1 (Battalion Aid Station) - where you take turns running and securing a BAS or extricating casualties from a battle zone. They use students to be casualties. Avoid being medic (you'll see a theme here), try to be security - it's more fun. There are some dudes hiding up on the hillside. This is fairly straightforward, because anything bigger than a splinter is going to be sent up to the level II.
2. Level 2 (CSH) - where you are now doing similar tasks, but at a larger scale hospital. Avoid being ER doc, traige officer, Evac nurse, CO/XO, these jobs suck and you get reamed. Security, again, is where the action is. Search the EPW's carefully-- they like to hide all kindsa weapons and grenades on themselves. Also remember to take weapons away from *everyone*-- nothing like a disgruntled C4 student taking out your command wby runing thorugh the tent with an M-16. It's bad form.
3. You get to be the fake patient for the other 2 rotations. Obviously the most fun. Get the squirty arterial bleed stuff. Being EPW's is also fun.
It's pretty cool because all the rotations interact. For example a casualty can be picked up on the battlefield, taken to the level 1, then evaced on to the Level 2. You finish around 1800-1900 on Thursday and head back to the hutments for showers.
One more thing - avoid being the RTO - the CINGARS weighs no less than 30 lbs. We both ended up carrying it the entire time. Try to trade it off among your squadmates. The same goes for the medic bag. Another side effect of the CINGARS is that you are often expected to not only radio the MEDEVAC but prepare it as well. They're easy though, and it's a chance to look good.
They will likely gas you at the Level 1 and Level 2 during the CONOPS.
Also, just when you think the whole thing is over - there is a final exercise on your way back to the hutments on Thursday night. You are in a convoy and there is a simulated IED/road side attack, where some people are in an ambulance and some in a deuce and a half. The ambulance folks have to evac the casualties while the folks in the deuce.5 have to lay suppressive fire. You then get to a rally point, secure the area, and send a 9-line medevac report.
the next day is outprocessing and "graduation". you should be outta there by 12:00 or so. Find someone with a POV to get you the hell out of there as soon as you can go. And grad some Rudy's on your way out--you'll thank us later.
--if you have any other questions feel free to ask them on this thread
--your friendly neighborhood combat peds caveman and your friendly neighborhood combat pathologist
