Wanted to share a story with folks here about a fun experience I had this summer. For a little back story, I do American Civil War reenactments with a Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. My position is Steward in the ambulance corps, basically a 19th century version of a combat medic. Unfortunatly our Surgeon has been captured by the Secesh, our Assistant Surgeon is a drunken womanizer last seen AWOL at a brothel, all the ambulance wagons are broken and someone shot the mules. So I’m just the lonely Stew trying to get by.

This took place at an event at height of summer in Virginia, during a ~3 mile march on a hot sunny day. The column of around 300 soldiers had just rounded a fenceline and was moving uphill through an open cow pasture, when I saw a soldier step out of formation and take a knee.

This sort of thing isn’t scripted, so I high-tailed it over to him. I was joined by one of our field assistants who is a LRN and serves as on-site and in costume medic. The guy tells us he’s ok, and was just getting a little over exerted. He seemed flush and sweaty, but was speaking clearly, so the LRN left me to watch him while she went and fetched the medics and their cart.

I told the guy he should take off his leathers and wool jacket to cool down, and I put some ice cubes into his neckerchief to help cool him. As he was doing this, I noticed the jagged scar running down the center line of his chest. Well….
“Sir, have you had heart surgery before?”
“Uh, yeah, a bypraphll…timy yunfl…”
I knew this wasn’t good, his speech was shot, and I could see his balance was off, even down on one knee. I laid him down with my ice bag under his head and took a reading with the pocket oxymeter the LRN left with me. 190bpm and O2sat in the low 80s. Well….

I looked for where the LRN had gone, hoping to see the medic and his atv coming this way. They were stopped about 70 yards uphill, both of them tending to another soldier on his back. I took a deep breath and used my big boy voice to call out the word all reenactors hate to hear in the field.
“MEDIC!!!”

While the medic got back on his ATV and drove down, I dumped all the ice I had in my bag into this guy’s armpits and between his thighs. He still had his heavy muslin shirt and wool trousers on, but I just wanted to get his core temperature down as quick as I could.
When the medic finally got there, he asked “Whats wrong with him?”
“Hyperthermic, incoherent, pulse 190 O2sat 80-whatever, has a history of heart failure.”
“Well…!”

So we got him loaded on the gurney, and he was taken to the first aid station they had set up, which was a big air conditioned tent with nurses and medics on standby. He eventually recovered without needing to go to the hospital, but his weekend was over. The other guy that went down had a sprained ankle, and I ended up walking him halfway back to base camp, until he caught a ride with another medic vehicle. I got to spend the rest of my day as a nice, relaxing make-beleive medic, administering whiskey to the wounded, dying, and just plain old bored.

What made this a great experience is when I was originally trying to get the promotion from a frumpy private to steward, many of the top brass guys were worried about me taking any modern first aid equipment into the field, which is why I was stuck with a bag of gas station ice and someone elses borrowed oxymeter, instead of my own oxymeter, instant cold packs, contact thermometer, etc. That policy has since been re-written.