In the dark of night, two soldiers used their medical skills and experience to treat four patients and a military working dog during an annual competition for Army medics. In the midst of triaging patients to evaluate who to treat first and who could wait for help, a drone flew overhead, taking out most of their casualties.
The combat scenario was simulated, but had plenty of stress.
“It kind of spoke to how real they’re trying to make the situation,” said Capt. Jesse Guerin told Task & Purpose. “You spent probably two hours working on these casualties and you’re about to evacuate them to safety and everybody, including the canine, ends up getting killed in a drone strike.”
The scenario was part of the Army’s 2025 Best Medic Competition at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Capt. Guerin and his teammate, Sgt. 1st Class Aaron Angulo, both assigned to Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii beat out 31 other teams for first place earlier this month.
Guerin is an occupational therapist while Angulo is a practical nurse, both positions that often practice in hospitals and clinics. But the two had to perform as field-level ‘dirt’ medics in the contest. Through the competition, the two had to treat a gunshot wound and severe abdominal injury, dispense pain medication, use blood products, manage a soldier with a simulated traumatic brain injury and perform prolonged casualty care.
“The scenario was that our air evacuation keeps getting delayed or the air is blocked, so we’re not able to do an evacuation so we keep moving further back and having to take care of the casualty for longer and longer periods,” Guerin said.
The two did all of this while using minimal light to conceal their location from potential enemy drones, a harsh reality for the modern battlefield.
“You don’t want to be seen by the enemy, so you have to perform under a red lens,” Angulo told Task & Purpose.
In addition to having their medical skills tested in a three-hour scenario, the competition included an obstacle course, a written exam on medical knowledge, a foot march, a simulated chemical attack and a land navigation course at the very end.
Angulo estimated the pair did 60 miles of rucking over three days.
By day two, Guerin’s pack was so heavy that the friction caused him to shed skin on the sides of his torso. Angulo only noticed when his teammate took off his shirt because Guerin didn’t utter one word about it.
“I don’t think it even registered as the most severe pain in my body at that time,” Guerin said. “I probably could have done something preventatively to keep that from happening but in the moment, we’re just moving forward.”
Angulo said his partner didn’t complain once but Guerin’s resilience pushed Angulo to keep going.
“Seeing that, it motivated me. I’m like, if he’s going through this much pain and he didn’t even complain, didn’t say anything about it,” Angulo said. “I saw him as like an older brother, like someone I looked up to and I think that helped push me to be the best person, to be the best soldier that I could possibly be.”
Guerin and Angulo said it was a rigorous three days that challenged them physically and mentally, all while on limited sleep.
In the medical field, there are different versions of equipment that soldiers have to be familiar with, like various types of respirators or blood warmers. They also have to become proficient in field care practices that require a lot of repetition, like suturing or putting in an IV. They also faced situations they do not often train for with a canine combat casualty and managing calcium levels for blood products, Angulo said.
“Medicine is always changing, things are always being updated,” he said. “If I did something in 2021 and it just recently changed, I’m teaching outdated medical skills.”
The scenario was a reminder of the reality of what medicine will look like for American soldiers on a future battlefield, Guerin said. In a potential conflict, the U.S. military and its medical professionals are expecting and training for “a lot more casualties.”
“In large-scale combat operations, it’s gonna be, really, all hands on deck so everyone needs to be able to perform those core medical skills, life-saving interventions,” he said. “Everyone should be able to have some medical knowledge to be able to take care of the people next to them.”