Application Combat Tourniquet

After 57 years, soldier will receive Purple Heart

Conrad Dowel now lives a life of peace and serenity in Northville with his wife of 50 years, Barbara. Very few people know that this quiet, former educator who spends his free time making elegant woodcarvings, is a real American hero who has experienced first-hand the horrors of the battlefield and the cruelty of armed conflict.

After 57 years, Dowel will be rewarded for his extraordinary military service and his sacrifice finally recognized by a grateful government next Monday.

Dowel will receive a Purple Heart and other combat medals he earned during his service with the U.S. Army in Korea during a special 10 a.m. ceremony just prior to the annual Fourth of July parade in downtown Northville this year.

When Dowel, whose surname was then Podolski, graduated from high school in his home town of Hamtramck, he left for Kentucky where he entered a Trappist monastery to pursue a quiet life of service, meditation and devotion. Fate had other plans for him, however, and after only about a year, severe allergies forced him to make a life-altering change from the path he had so carefully chosen.

It was 1951 and the Korean Conflict was raging, so Podolski enlisted in the U.S. Army, thinking he could still pursue a life of service, even on a path as unorthodox as the military.

Podolski was assigned duties as a combat medic and shipped to Korea by Army officials. His field medic training included some brief instructions in how to inject morphine, the application of a tourniquet to a wound and how to carry a litter, he said. That was the only training he received before being sent to the battlefield. “Today, field medics are well trained. Most of them have the skills of a trained nurse and some are close to doctors. But back then, well, it was like night and day.”

Bleeding wounds, he recalled, often froze closed in the 30 degree below zero temperature before medical treatment could be provided. He saw fellow soldiers tied up with barbed wire or with barbed wire strung across and through their mouths, a result of torture by the enemy.

“We didn’t try to save anybody. We did what we could before they died,” he recalled.

During one of his many attempts to retrieve soldiers wounded on the battlefield, Podolski and a group of five or six soldiers attempting to carry two injured men on litters down the side of a hill to a Jeep were attacked by enemy fire.

“The round came in and most everyone died,” he said. He recalled hearing the round and seeing the man in front of him drop to the ground. He said he knew the two men behind him had also been hit by the incoming fire. He heard another round coming and then, he said, everything went black.

How To Stop Bleeding: The Combat Application Tourniquet And ...

Wilderness medicine practitioners encounter situations of severe bleeding, so this information is essential for anyone responsible for the health and safety of outdoor explorers and adventurers.

In a simple algorithm, we learned that the first attempt to control bleeding is almost always direct hand pressure. This is followed by application of a pressure bandage. If that is successful, the victim then is evacuated. If the pressure bandage does not adequately control bleeding on the torso of the victim, then a hemostatic (stops bleeding) substance is applied prior to evacuation. If bleeding from an arm or leg threatens the victim’s life, a tourniquet may be required. A hemostatic agent that is being used with increasing frequency is QuikClot Combat Gauze. Tourniquets include the Combat

QuikClot is composed of microporous, aluminosilicate minerals (zeolite), and does not release heat when applied to the site of bleeding. It can be integrated into woven kaolin-impregnated gauze. The kaolin causes rapid blood clotting where the gauze is applied and is not absorbed into the body. The gauze is safe to leave in the wound until further medical care becomes available. To use the gauze, one opens clothing around the than one gauze roll. It is very important to remember that after the gauze is packed into the wound, pressure directly over the bleeding must still be applied continuously for a minimum of three minutes or until the bleeding stops. The packed portion of the gauze is then anchored in place by wrapping and tying the remainder of the bandage, or using another bandage, to maintain pressure.  If the bleeding continues to briskly soak through the gauze, then the wound may be repacked with the original gauze (or new gauze if available) to more accurately apply pressure.

A tourniquet is used on an arm or leg to stop bleeding from a survivable wound. The Combat Application Tourniquet (C-A-T) is a small and lightweight one-handed (i.e., the victim can self-apply the tourniquet) tourniquet that completely occludes arterial blood flow in a limb. To apply this tourniquet, it is ideally placed on the bare arm or leg a few inches above the site of bleeding (between the bleeding and the heart). Next, one pulls the self-adhering band to tightness and securely fastens it back on itself.  Then, the windlass rod is twisted until bleeding has stopped. The windlass rod is then locked in place with the windlass clip. Then, the self-adhering band is adhered over the windlass rod.  To complete the process, everything is secured by grasping the windlass strap and pulling it tightly and then fastening it to the opposite hook on the windlass clip. Obviously, it is important to practice with the device prior to attempting to use it in a critical life-threatening situation.

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