medic

When seconds matter: American and European SOF medics hone their craft

Treating a wounded comrade while under fire is one of the tougher aspects of war-fighting. Enemy fire and adverse battlefield conditions add to the existing stress of a medical emergency. The wounded’s life is in the balance and there’s no room for error. That is the reason why medics undergo long intellectually, emotionally, and mentally […]

Former Army Ranger medic to teach trauma course in Burma

Bryce Dryden is a former medic from 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, who is heading out to the jungles of Burma to teach trauma medicine. He is working with Earth Mission Asia, a non-profit that has worked in the area for years, striving to build healthcare infrastructure among the Karen people in eastern Burma/Myanmar. […]

3 details from ‘Saving Private Ryan’ that push the movie to another level

There are spoilers from “Saving Private Ryan” in this article. Stephen Spielberg has been regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time–so much so, that it can be tiresome to hear and almost uncool to like him because he’s so popular. His attention to detail is not only fascinating, but it is indicative […]

SOFREP Exclusive: Medal of Honor Recipient James McCloughan

Specialist Five James McCloughan’s Medal of Honor citation, like all Medal of Honor citations, will drop your jaw to the floor. A 23 year old combat medic in the middle of Vietnam, he braved heavy fire to move an injured casualty to safety and was wounded by shrapnel before saving two more. He went on […]

Next Generation Combat Medic wants to ‘Stop the Bleed’ and save civilian lives

Andy Fisher is currently a second-year medical student at Texas A&M College of Medicine.  He is probably like a lot of other medical students, studying hard and trying to grind his way through a grueling four years of intense academia.  Unlike most other medical students, he served as a former physician assistant (PA) for the 75th […]

Phil Melcher | U.S. Army

Phil Melcher may never know about the total impact he has made throughout the world, but he got a glimpse of it through a chance meeting in Columbia several years ago. Melcher, an Army Green Beret, was serving in the South American country when he was woken up at 2 a.m. to deliver a baby. […]

SOF pic of the day: Going down

A special operations combat medic from the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) rappels down a cliff side at a Fort Carson, Colorado training area to retrieve a mock-casualty during medical evacuation training Nov. 9. During the two-day training event, medics from 10th SFG(A) were placed in several different scenarios and tested on a variety of […]

Secrets, denial, and, decades later, a Medal of Honor for a Vietnam medic

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Unofficially, in the jungles of Laos in 1970, hundreds of North Vietnamese troops closed in on a small team of United States Army commandos. Unofficially, as men were shot down, a medic sprinted through a hail of bullets to help, hefting a man over his shoulder as he fired back with one […]

Leatherman Raptor Trauma Shears

Before the dawn of time, while the world was still young, Odin All father wandered upon the land and saw that it was good. If one looked closely at old One Eye, they would see a Go Bag slung across his chest. The All Father knows any good EDC contains some form of first aid […]

Operation Red Wings II: Lone Survivor recovery operation (Part I)

I sat down with a former Ranger medic from 3rd Ranger Battalion for a few hours to talk about the massive rescue and recovery operation following Operation Red Wings. Doc’s platoon was alerted and deployed to Afghanistan within 18 hours. SOFREP: What was going through your head when you first got the page to deploy […]