Catch up in 40 seconds: how wounded soldiers are rescued in Kursk region
Floating front line. Danger of DRGs. "Flying" BMSs - sorting and evacuation points for the wounded, which, depending on the situation, can quickly change their location. These are the combat realities in the Kursk region. Izvestiya reports on how civilian medicine differs from military medicine, why not all nurses are allowed into the operating room, and how the experience of a storm trooper and a nurse can be combined.
First aid
Silence, abandoned snow-covered huts. The village we arrive in looks like a natural bear corner: it seems that there are no people here and cannot be. However, first in one house we meet military men with a red cross on their chests, then in another. In these yards is based sorting and evacuation point of one of the regiments of the Ministry of Defense, from several ends of the line of combat contact on snowy country roads here are brought "three hundred" - the wounded. This is called "the first shoulder of evacuation": the injured fighters receive the first qualified aid here, after which they are sent to the "green zone", into the hands of surgeons, anesthesiologists, traumatologists.
Oksana Matilda is an officer in the medical unit
There are no peaceful people left in the village. A couple of months ago, the line of contact was only 2 kilometers away, and everyone left. Now the distance has increased, but this territory cannot yet be called a full-fledged rear area. At any moment the silence can be cut by the roar of a kamikaze drone.
A gun is always at hand - in case the enemy appears
The eldest at the medical station is doctor Oksana, call sign Matilda. She has a PM pistol at her side - in case DRGs show up and we have to shoot back. In the hut, where the reception of the wounded is taking place, there is a wooden table covered with a blanket. IVs, thermal blankets, syringes, stretchers by the walls. The signal about the arrival of patients can come at any moment - that's why the medical team is always as if on alert, despite the lulling surrounding peace. More often than not, not one, but several fighters requiring emergency care are brought in.
A radical fracture
Oksana Matilda is from Dzhankoy. Pediatrician with 10 years of experience. She is a mom of three children. Her relatives on her father's side were Crimean partisans. Their example in many ways and directed her, when for the first time - right after the beginning of the SVO - she went to the military commission as a volunteer. They refused with the wording "as long as there are enough doctors". Nevertheless, Oksana soon found herself at the front - civilian.
- As part of a medical brigade, we went to the newly annexed Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions for children's check-ups," says the interviewee. - What I saw there caused a shock.
We are talking about the state of health of schoolchildren, the doctor explains. Most of them have never undergone routine check-ups (as required by regulations in Russia). Hence the neglect of diseases, including mental illnesses, which simply no one recognized in time and did not provide proper care. Many children had their first visit to ultrasound, blood sampling, or a basic pediatrician's appointment. Some of them were sent immediately to hospitalization in neighboring Crimea after detected disorders or chronic diseases. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in rural areas there were no fully functioning feldsher-midwifery stations, there was a categorical shortage of personnel.
- The state of affairs was critical. People, in fact, were abandoned a long time ago, - comments the doctor. - Both Kherson and Zaporizhzhya were identical in this sense. After 2022 the situation began to change dramatically.
On the way of a shrapnel
Oksana signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense in the spring of 2023 for three years at once. Today she is a lieutenant in the medical service. During her training, she learned the basics of working with combat trauma. The principle "don't doubt, even if you are not sure - make one decision, you don't have much time" turned out to be important. This rule, according to the doctor, allows you not to fall into a stupor, but to act calmly and clearly.
Another acquired skill is the ability to feel for 40 seconds in the darkness of a wounded person (in clothes, body armor) and identify sources of bleeding.
- Once, in the Kherson region, a Ukrainian shell hit our station," Matilda says. - The electricity was cut. My driver turned out to be a "trista". I groped him in the dark and in those very 40 seconds found the places of lesions. We saved him.
The most memorable case from practice was in the summer of 2023 in the Kherson region, recalls the doctor. The name of the wounded was Maxim, a saninstruktor in a squad of storm troopers. The guy was riddled from the heels to the torso. Amazingly, his own sister Marusya was on duty in the hospital at that hour (each of them went to the zone of the SWO as a volunteer). But she was suspended from work, not even allowed into the operating room - you can not, the hand may tremble. In the end, the fighter was "collected", everything went well. While rendering assistance it turned out: one of the shrapnel froze on his chest, near his heart, stuck in the prayer book - a paper book miraculously stopped the movement of deadly metal.
On a remote patch
Among Oksana's helpers is 24-year-old sanitary instructor Igor Barmaley from Vladikavkaz. He looks like a very young boy. He comes from a military family: his father is a scout, his uncle is a Hero of Russia. My mother is a nurse.
- The army environment is dear to me," says the fighter.
Saninstruktor Igor, call sign Barmaley.
In 2022 he was mobilized. He went to Zaporozhye. He took specialties of grenade launcher, sniper, was in the crew of a BMP. Now he is in the medical squad (he himself has three contusions and a wound). He provides first aid to incoming soldiers, bandages and treats wounds. He says that sometimes he is drawn back to the front line, young blood is playing, but, apparently, now it is time to take a break. He got into the medical unit thanks to Oksana. "He was too puny! I felt sorry for him, so I took him in," says the doctor. She became his godmother here on the Kursk land. Thanks to her, he decided to connect his life with medicine in the future - to study to become a paramedic.
Medbrat Roman, call sign Ramon, is 29. He is from the Orenburg region. He looks as powerful and unruffled as a rock. He simply says about himself: "A country boy." Episodes from his childhood: from a small age he chopped poultry, carried dug potatoes from the vegetable garden to the house under a steep mountain - a sack on his shoulder. After the army he worked as a tractor driver. In 2022 he was mobilized to the SSO. He was sent to the DNR - to an assault unit.
- I went on assaults a total of four times," Roman says. - The task was to take the enemy's trenches. It was scary, but what to do... After you break one line and have to go further, the main thing is not to stop for a long time. Take a break, reload, help the wounded - and go on, until the adrenaline has not gone away. If you sit too long, you will not be able to force yourself later...
Driver and nurse Roman, call sign Ramon.
Three assaults for Roman were successful, that's where village physical and psychological hardening came in full use. And on the fourth he was hit by a shrapnel. But even so, the fighter says, it's a sin to complain - he was lucky for a very long time. After treatment and rehabilitation (he spent a month at home) he returned to the regiment. And got into the medical platoon. He acts as a nurse, as a driver and even as a carpenter - he made, for example, that big manipulation table. All together they - a small detachment - hold the defense on this remote patch. All together they save the guys who are liberating the Kursk region.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
