Buchanan understands why Sailors like Butler gravitate towards the Marine Corps way of life.
“As an E-2 in the Navy, if you’re on a ship or in a hospital, you don’t have a whole lot of responsibility,” said Buchanan. “When I went to Desert Storm with the Marines as an E-2, I was 17 years old, but I had an immense amount of responsibility, more than I really wanted. I had a group of Marines whose medical care was assigned to me – just me. I was in charge of everything that happened to them. I had their medical records. I was in charge of making sure their immunizations were up to date.
“If they got hurt I had to fix them, and if I got hurt they had to fix me. You’re never going to be a leader of a group of individuals in a hospital as an E-2, but in the Marine Corps, when it comes to medical care for the Marines, you are. And that’s the most rewarding thing there is, to take a group of people like that into combat and bring them back alive”
While no experience outside the realm of actual combat prepares a Sailor for what awaits him on today’s battlefields, FMSS gives their students the kind of instructors and life tools they need to reach their full potential out in the field.
“Whether or not FMSS prepares you for everything you’ll see in combat is a tricky question to answer,” said Buchanan, “because this is an entry level school. When I went through, they taught you how to apply a bandage, how to stop bleeding, etc., but when I was over there during Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm I was scared. I wasn’t scared I was going to get shot or something like that. No, I was scared I was going to make a mistake or hurt somebody. Things are much different now for the corpsmen going through FMSS because we work hard to build their self-confidence. I don’t think they have the same apprehensions coming out of here that I did in 1990.”
War stories fresh from the front lines of Iraq defend Buchanan’s beliefs.
“When I graduated from FMSS,” said HM3(FMF) Paul Haggerty, Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, Camp LeJeune, N.C., “I had the idea that the training at FMSS was kind of lax, and that I would never be sent to a front-line Marine platform because I worked at a naval hospital. I was wrong. When I got orders telling me I was deploying with 3/8 I was nervous because I thought I wouldn’t be ready. But it turns out that the training at FMSS was everything I needed out there. It was right on cue.”
Haggerty deployed to Iraq Jan. 17, 2005, and returned safely Aug. 14. Less than a month after stepping foot in the desert, he was put to the test as a FMSS graduate.
“It was early February, two weeks after the elections,” said Haggerty, “and my platoon was rolling down the main supply route when a seven-ton truck was hit by an improvised explosive device [IED], and shots were fired. It was another platoon’s convoy, and they had no corpsmen in that platoon. It was just me. And there were five to six wounded Iraqi civilians dying right in front of me. They had massive trauma, sucking chest wounds and there I was taking care of five, six people all by myself. None of the Marines were hurt, and I saved all the civilians.
Help eventually arrived, but what was so weird about it was when it happened I was moving so fast. It was just like the training at FMSS – battle assessments, ABCs, prioritizing patients, etc. The training was almost exactly to what the real situation was, and I never hesitated.”
The words, “never hesitated” are music to the ears of any FMSS instructor as proof that what they teach down at Camp LeJeune their west-coast partner, FMSS West, Camp Pendleton, Calif., works.
And while stories like Haggerty’s are told and retold down at the school house with a smile, instructors and students alike know not every beginning will have a happy ending, no matter how well they train.
“The toughest thing I’ve had to deal with so far in my life was the loss of a loved one,” said Coyle. “And what I’m about to do will be tougher because when you live, eat, and sleep with Marines every day you build up a camaraderie that is every bit the same – if not stronger than your family back home. And there will probably come a time when I will lose a fellow Marine in the field. That will be
my toughest day.”
And it always will be, for a “doc.”
