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thedrifter
10-11-05, 07:05 PM
October 17, 2005
Wounded troops return to range
Shooting simulator gives them a chance to qualify on a weapon
By Gina Cavallaro
Times staff writer

The night desert is dark and cloudless. Four U.S. service members stand on high alert, waiting and watching, their weapons locked and loaded.

Suddenly, enemy fighters are seen rushing through the smoke and glare of the trip flares.

The soldiers open fire. One by one, the advancing fighters fall.

But the troops are not in a war zone. The two soldiers, a sailor and a Marine are in a small, dark, garage-level room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Each is missing all or part of an arm. Still, they are gamely operating the computerized weapons to take out the enemy projected 20 feet in front of them.

Their mission is to prove that with the help of this simulated firing range they can be fully rehabilitated in one of the most important warrior tasks: firing a weapon.

Some are doing it to achieve personal goals; others are doing it so they can return to duty. All are doing it as part of a rehab pilot program.

“This is the next best thing to actually shooting live rounds,” said Lance Cpl. Chase Savage, 21, of Charleston, Miss., a rifleman with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, who lost his lower right arm to a roadside bomb explosion a year ago south of Baghdad.

Savage said he misses his fellow Marines and would prefer to stay in the Corps but is getting out because of his injury.

He can’t bear the thought of taking a desk job.

“Ever since I got out of boot camp, I just wanted to get out of this deployment and go back and train Marines,” he said. “I don’t want to be a Marine if I can’t be in the infantry.”

He said the simulated firing range at Walter Reed has been a good way to get back up on his shooting skills.

Savage may be having fun, but he’s also part of this rehabilitation test, which is the first of its kind for the military. The study aims to determine whether service members with upper extremity wounds can qualify to standard on a virtual firing range.

The goal is to rehabilitate 35 wounded service members to their original marksmanship levels.

The trainer is called the Firearms Training System, and it’s familiar to most service members because it is in use across the military.

The weapons are connected by cables to a computer that can project a variety of training scenarios and wind, weather and lighting conditions.

The computer also tracks a shooter’s barrel trace, canting, trigger squeeze and butt stock pressure.

So far, 18 service members have enrolled in the test and qualified on one of three firearms — the M16, M4 and 9mm pistol, each of which is within 5 percent of its actual weight and fires within 10 percent of actual recoil.

More troops are needed for the test and are expected to enroll now that summer convalescent leave is over and patients have returned.

“They don’t have to be amputees, either. It’s just any upper extremity injury,” said Barry Yancosek, a civilian contractor hired by the Walter Reed Telemedicine Directorate to run the program, which began in June and will continue until 35 people have been tested.

More than 300 service members have become amputees in Iraq or Afghanistan, about a third of those in the upper extremities, according to the Walter Reed Amputee Patient Care Program.

Learning how to shoot again is one more step in the long process of getting a service member’s broken body back to where it was. In some cases, an important part of the test is the use of additional support or harness devices to help severely wounded patients regain control and stability in various shooting positions.

Some positions present greater difficulties than others, Yancosek said.

“The hard one is an unsupported prone where they have to use the prosthetic or injured limb to hold the weapon,” he said.

Healing wounds of all kinds

Army Sgt. Mike Somers, 29, of Van Alstyne, Texas, is the top qualifier on the 9mm pistol. Shooting with his left hand, he supports it with what’s left of his right arm, a six-inch stump with a strong shoulder that has a full range of motion.

Somers, a military policeman with 212th MP Company, 18th MP Brigade, V Corps, in Germany, is a little shy about saying how he lost his arm because it was due to a non-combat condition: cancer.

“On March 28, 2005, I was diagnosed as terminal. I had a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor,” he said, pointing to an imaginary forearm. “I was one day from going to Afghanistan when they found the tumor, and I got sent to Walter Reed. [The cancer] had spread to my lungs.”

Somers, who is in remission, was at Fort Irwin, Calif., when he was assigned to the 212th MP Company.

He said he had re-enlisted for five years just so he could deploy with his former unit.

“Now, I’ll probably never go back to being an MP,” he said, “but my goal is to stay in the Army and go wherever they need me.”

As such, he said, he is eager to qualify on the other two weapons on the trainer so he can qualify on a real range later.

“The primary duty of a soldier is to be able to fire a weapon. I need to be able to accomplish my duties,” Somers said.

The virtual weapons training test will expand to other Army rehab centers in the future, including Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and the new amputee center to be built at Walter Reed.

The road to recovery

Many amputees and patients who have suffered other upper-extremity injuries “want to return to duty and weapons qualification is a requirement for that,” said Col. Bill Howard, chief of occupational therapy at Walter Reed.

“They need to be able to use their upper extremities to fire a weapon. It is one of those common tasks that may disqualify them from returning to duty,” Howard noted.

The results of the pilot program will help occupational therapists refine the marksmanship portion of rehab and make it a regular part of a service member’s road to recovery.

Yancosek said planning to remain in uniform is not a prerequisite, at this point, for taking advantage of the virtual range.

“If a guy wants to stay in the service and requalify, that’s why I’m there. But if a guy just wants to shoot, I don’t care. I just want to make them happy,” he said. “These guys are poked and prodded; they’re sick, they’re hurting. Even if they want to come down for 10 minutes, it’s great for them.”

Army Sgt. Robert Blikle, 26, of Moore, S.C., is a field artilleryman with Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 178th Field Artillery, in the South Carolina National Guard. He’s not sure whether he will stay in or take medical retirement.

He lost his left arm in March near Baghdad when a roadside bomb was detonated near his vehicle. He’s been training with the Walter Reed fire department to keep his civilian firefighting skills sharp, but he said the firearms simulator has been a real help.

He shoots with his right hand and holds the front end of the rifle with a hook at the end of a plastic forearm that is installed on the stump below his elbow. He operates the hook by maneuvering his shoulder with a leather harness he wears across his back and chest.

“I enjoy just being able to get out and shoot again,” said Blikle, who fired his first weapon when he was 8 years old. “I’ve always enjoyed shooting. I just want to get back to where I was.”

Back in action

For many who have been on the Walter Reed simulator, it’s the difference between feeling like a patient and feeling like a service member again.

Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jose Ramos, 25, of El Paso, Texas, was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines’ Scout Sniper Platoon in July 2004 when a rocket took out his left arm during a dismounted patrol in Kharma, west of Baghdad.

He goes to the range once or twice a week to continue building on each day’s progress.

“I think one of the reasons we do it so much is to get used to it,” Ramos said.

Gina Cavallaro covers the Army.

Ellie