Training for Real
Playing for real in "The Box", By Robert Abrams, Editor, High Desert Warrior
The sight must have been quite startling even if the Soldiers had already been to Iraq. Following a bomb blast, their comrade was motionless in the street with his legs blown off. As the Soldiers carried him away on a stretcher, he screamed and writhed in pain. Blood strandsof flesh remained where his legs once were.
The bomb blast was simulated, a loud noise, but no real damage. The Soldiers carrying the stretcher were training. There were in a Iraq-like towno of Medina Wasl in the National Training Center's area, known as "The Box".
The Soldier without legs was really a double-amputee hired to play the role of a wounded so Soldier. The blood and strands of flesh were applied by make-up artists. In Iraq, of course, a blast like this one, and the blood that went with it, would be real.
"What we're really doing is an interactive, combat-focused Broadway play," said Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, former Commanding General of the NTC and Fort Irwin.