In all the war films I have seen, someone gets shot (wait for it), and another person runs up to the fallen soldier, hoists the body up onto his shoulders as if the body were a small calf, stands straight up, and runs for cover, and invariably gets shot.
Now since the rescuer gets shot so often, my question is: in the real army, are the men trained to go and rescue their fallen comrads while they are still under fire? The rescuer gets shot so often that it doesn’t make economic sense to kill another soldier in an attempted rescue.
Is Hoisting the person up on their shoulders (the way they do it in the movies) the most efficient way to move a person? AFAIK, firemen drag the person backwards as if the person were a sack of wheat.
It is a fairly common practice for a sniper to intentionally wound an enemy in order to kill others who will invariably try to save him. It is dangerous as hell to leave a prtected position to rescue a buddy, but it is harder to listen to a guy you have trained with eaten with fought with and lived with, suffering. So yea, soldiers do try to save an injured buddy and yea many of them get killed trying to save them. War sucks.
As far as how they carry them, they do it any way they can. Firemen do not always drag people, there is that little thing called…the Fireman’s Carry. It works better if you have a long way to carry the person.
Sgt. askeptic, 101st LRSD Airborne, US Army 1987-1992
I also am in the Army, while not in a combat role. But I have had the basic infantry training that all Army soldiers get and some additional training. I would agree w/ Skeptic that, what better way to snipe someone than to try to get them to retrieve a wounded comrade. However, I would think, that if it was a combat situation, as opposed to a sniper, one might be more willing to risk retrieving a buddy. However, if bullets are actively flying, I think the one doing the retrieving would be well advised to low crawl (belly crawl) and attempt to drag the wounded, thus exposing less of a target to get shot at. Also, from a basic first aid standpoint (I have taken and passed Combat Lifesavers training), it is usually highly discouraged to move a wounded person w/o performing immediate first aid, unless it’s absolutely neccessary. And even still, it’s usually recommended to wait for professionally trained medics. However, this would all vary, depending on the specific situation. But if it’s a sniper situation, I think it’d be far wiser to kill the sniper first. There’s my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
My $.02 is this. I was in the Army for 6 years and was never anything ‘real’ special except ‘Air Assault’. (The dudes who rappel out of helicopters). I was in there in '91 thru desert storm stationed in Doha. Nothing compared to D-Day…Pearl Harbor, what have you…but…still action. I think it’s more of a ‘brother’ thing. When it gets down to it, these folks are your family and you’ll do almost anything for them.
I’d hate the feeling of any family finding out the family member they’d loved was dead…and not accounted for.
Probably not quite real life, but a quote from Terry Pratchett:
Picking her up like that! The bravest thing I’ve ever seen!
Yeah. And it meant less chance of them hitting me, too.
What? Granny, that’s awful!
Why? She’d been hit already. If I’d have been hit two, NEITHER of us would have got out.