As an active-duty sailor from Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Va., with only two years in the service, the hospitalman experienced a lot in his seven months with the Kunar Provincial Reconstruction Team.As a corpsman, Beheler works with a forward surgical team operating a Level 2 care facility at Forward Operating Base Wright in Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The Roanoke, Va., native said he was prepared for many of things he has seen at the facility, and for others, he was not.“It’s been real busy at times,â€Â Beheler said. “When we’ve got operations going on in our area, many casualties will come in through our [facility]. They’ll use anyone with medical experience to help, and I really wasn’t prepared for that. I’m used to seeing things in the field, not seeing things in a clinical setting. That took some getting used to.â€ÂBeheler, who received an Army Commendation Medal with Valor for saving the life of a fellow provincial reconstruction team member who suffered a gunshot wound, said being on patrols still is the most challenging aspect of his job. “When you’re out doing missions, we are that medical asset,â€Â Beheler said. “I know that I can fight my way to you, treat you and fight my way back with you. There’s only one medical corpsman on the crew, so you better know what you’re doing.â€Â Navy Lt. Cmdr. Lynn Redman of San Antonio, nurse practitioner with the team, said she's impressed with Beheler’s performance and that she is so confident in the work he does, she would trust him to treat one of her children. “He’s handled everything very concisely,â€Â Redman said. “He’s consistent. He’s bottom-line. I don’t have to wonder about him. He is my lowest-ranking corpsman, but he is a hard-charger. He’s very knowledgeable. He should have been a doctor.â€Â Beheler said one of the best things he’s experienced has been the people he works with and the friends he made within the unit. Army Sgt. Patrick Johnson of Worcester, Mass., said Beheler is a good medic and a great listener and learner, and that this experience will help Beheler in the future. “He’s been a delightful subordinate,â€Â Johnson said. “He’s quick to listen, learn and volunteer, and that is at the core of being a great corpsman. He’s going to leave here with so much knowledge. He’s also become a close, personal friend of mine. I’m proud to have met and known him.â€Â Beheler said his teammates are great to work with and have made his experience rewarding. “I couldn’t have asked for any better people to work with,â€Â Beheler said. “There are three corpsmen and one Army medic. We all have our little specialty. We work really, really well together. There’s a mutual respect there that has a lot to do with it, too. We actually care about one another.â€Â May 2, 2011: By Air Force Tech. Sgt. Chuck Walker- Kunar Provincial Reconstruction Team

Air Force Lt. Col. (Dr.) Raymond Fang, director of trauma at Landstuhl for the past seven years, will serve as director of the Air Force’s Center for the Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills program –- known as “C-STARSâ€Â -– which is affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Medical Center.The state-of-the-art center admits more than 7,000 trauma patients and performs more than 8,000 surgeries per year. It’s the longest-standing of three C-STARS programs the Air Force Expeditionary Medical Skills Institute runs in conjunction with civilian hospital trauma centers. The others are at St. Louis University and the University of Cincinnati. The Army and Navy have similar programs, Fang noted. The Army runs its program through the Army Team Training Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center in Miami. The Navy Trauma Training Center is affiliated with the Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center. The Air Force’s C-STARS program started about 10 years ago, when the military saw very few trauma patients, and with only a few exceptions, looked to civilian trauma centers to treat military trauma patients. “So in order to maintain trauma care experience, the military knew it had to engage with civilian centers that are busy,â€Â Fang said. Now through C-STARS, Air Force physicians, nurses and medical technicians rotate through these trauma centers, working side by side with civilian medical staff as they provide hands-on trauma patient care under the supervision of military and civilian staff. “They embed a team of Air Force personnel who on a daily basis take care of trauma patients and sick patients to maintain that experience,â€Â Fang said. The Cincinnati program is dedicated to training medical professionals for the critical care air transport team mission that treats the most critical patients during aeromedical evacuations. But in Baltimore, Fang will take his vast experience gained treating service members evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan to prepare other Air Force medical personnel to follow in his footsteps. Civilian trauma patients typically suffer from blunt trauma from a car or motorcycle accident or a penetrating trauma from a gunshot or stabbing, he explained. Combat wounded troops frequently suffer both, he added, as well as blast injuries. “With these blast injuries, you get the blunt part of the concussive wave, you get the penetrating part of the fragment, you get the heat part with the burns,â€Â he said. “You also get the blast component: the shock wave, the pressure wave of the blast itself. So we have four mechanisms in one. It’s our most common mechanism of injury here.â€Â Fang said the C-STARS program helps to pass critical trauma-care skills to Air Force medical staffs. “As other Air Force members prepare to go downrange, they come and rotate with you, and you give them an immersion experience in how to take care of this patient population,â€Â he said. “We take our own personal experience, we take real patient situations and we try to let the people who rotate with us learn from what we have all learned already, rather than relearn things or make things up on their own.â€Â April 27, 2011: By Donna Miles- American Forces Press Service

It was a loud boom, and the building shook,â€Â she recalled. “I thought somebody had pushed one of those big safes and knocked it over, and I thought ‘Why would somebody do that?’ Then everybody started coming out of their offices screaming, ‘We’ve been hit! We’ve been hit!’â€ÂFor Owens, the attack began a long series of days with little rest as she helped to secure the site, establish a force protection perimeter and manage the massive influx of investigators, rescuers and others involved with the recovery effort. Today, Owens still works for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, but she has traded in her uniform for civilian attire, serving in the agency’s antiterrorism and force protection directorate, working with managers of Defense Department-leased facilities in the national capital region. “We advise them on their antiterrorism plans,â€Â she explained. “That means helping them conduct vulnerability assessments, threat assessments and criticality assessments. For me, it’s actually helping people to go through the process of determining how they are going to respond to certain types of emergencies. That’s what I like about the job.â€Â In addition to developing and maintaining antiterrorism and force protection plans for more than 20 leased facilities, Owens also represents her directorate for table-top exercises with the agency’s training directorate. “Zelma is one of my budding superstars,â€Â said Jim Pelkofski, antiterrorism and force protection director. “The more I get to know her and the more I learn her talents, the more I lean on her, and the more tasks and responsibilities I push her way. “I’ve very much placed her in an operational role within the organization, because I see that kind of talent in her,â€Â he added. “I really think highly of her. She has a great attitude. She has a great level of knowledge.â€Â Owens began gathering that knowledge with the Pentagon police in 1997. Before 9/11, she was a liaison from the police to the antiterrorism and force protection directorate. “That was my first experience with [the directorate], and my interest grew,â€Â she said, especially in 9/11’s immediate aftermath. “We had to identify guard positions, define how many officers were going to work each post, what their hours would be, and we had to do it quickly,â€Â she said. “That was my first experience in helping to develop mitigation measures for an [antiterrorism] plan.â€Â She earned two promotions in the Pentagon police department, attaining the rank of lieutenant and becoming responsible for “random antiterrorism measuresâ€Â -- security measures that routinely change their look and type to make it difficult for terrorists to predict challenges they would face in an attack -– on the Pentagon reservation. She was hired into her current position in 2006. Owens said it’s easy to understand why she’s passionate about her job. “Saving lives,â€Â she said. “I’m in the business of saving lives.â€Â April 26, 2011: By Paul Taylor- Pentagon Force Protection Agency

Sure, there was celebratory cake, and his family was there -– albeit via video teleconference from Fort Campbell, Ky., -– but the spirit of this Army promotion was different.“Everyone makes [chief warrant officer 2],â€Â said Joe Roberts, a fellow chief warrant officer 5 and the command chief warrant officer for the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade, Task Force Thunder. “But there are only about 350 CW5s in the Army.â€Â Chief warrant officer 5 is the pinnacle of a warrant officer’s career, and very few ever attain that rank. It takes dedication and drive to reach that point. It also takes diversity. “My success has had a lot to do with having the opportunities to take the right jobs at the right times,â€Â Soto explained. “I’ve been multi-tracked –- working both safety and standardization -– which has also helped me to reach this point.â€Â Soto began his career in the Army much like most warrant officers –- as an enlisted soldier. He started out as an infantryman and served for eight and a half years, attaining the rank of staff sergeant while at flight school, after assignments in Colorado and Germany. “I thought it was going to be a quick four years,â€Â he said. Soto said he joined the Army looking for some direction after completing an associate’s degree. He also was looking for additional funding for school. “I didn’t come from a well-to-do family,â€Â explained Soto, who hails from the Bronx, N.Y. “Everything we ever had fallen on the shoulders of my mom and dad.â€Â Almost 30 years later, Soto is setting the example for others to follow. “Tony has had to stand out way above his peers,â€Â Roberts said. “He has done everything the Army asked of him and more.â€Â Early in his career as an aviator, Soto used his proficiency as a Spanish speaker to serve in South America working for the State Department. “That assignment really helped me see the big picture of aviation,â€Â he said. While he was there, Soto helped to standardize the maintenance and training cycles for the UH-1 Huey and MI-17 helicopters being used in theater, as well as C-27 fixed-wing aircraft. Today, he fills a similar role here within Task Force Thunder. “He gets the point across in a professional way that lets the rest of the brigade know what’s expected of them,â€Â Roberts said. As the brigade standardization officer, Soto is responsible for ensuring consistency in aircraft procedures throughout the brigade. He said he volunteered for the assignment, and he couldn’t be more proud to be part of the task force. As a chief warrant officer 5, Soto said he has the opportunity to influence change. “It’s about improving systems and making air crews safer,â€Â he said. “Whatever you do, you should do it with a lot of passion and put safety first. It’s easy to identify a problem, but to come up with a solution, that’s what sets you apart.â€Â April 25, 2011: By Army Sgt. 1st Class Stephanie L. Carl- Task Force Thunder