Amputees simulating real trauma

FORT IRWIN — Greg Vice gets blown up four times a day.
Each time, he flops around on the desert floor like a fish out of water, screaming, cussing and throwing rocks. Sometimes blood shoots from the stump that is his left leg. Sometimes he fights with the soldiers who try to save. Sometimes those soldiers pass out.
Of course, it is all an act, part of the training simulation that occurs in the desert at Fort Irwin for soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan, and Vice makes more real.
“I could probably get a job behind a desk or something,” the native of San Diego said, “but until this (the war) stops, this is what I want to do.”
The amputee — Vice lost his leg in a car accident — pretends to be a soldier who loses his leg after an improvised explosive device destroys his jeep. Covered in fake blood, Vice lies by the side of the smoldering carcass of a jeep, waiting for a group of soldiers to take him away from the scene and treat his wound. It can take up to 20 minutes of wailing in pain
before the soldiers arrive. Last week, Vice had to take a day off because he lost his voice from all the screaming.
The Fort Irwin job is Vice’s first acting gig. He has been working during rotations in the desert as a wounded soldier for a few weeks at time since November. He said in that time, many soldiers have told him that they have flashbacks to time spent in Iraq and the carnage of the scenes there. Some have passed out when they go to treat him, and Vice is glad to offer that level of realism.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said, “have that happen here rather than over there.”
Vice offers the National Training Center the lack of his left leg, but a small team of battlefield wound effects artists make it look like it was just cut off. Known as the “blood girls” for their expertise in working with fake blood, Carie Helm, Alisha Saunders and Nikki Gilman add the blood and guts essential to the
trauma scenario.
“They’re not used to seeing people with missing arms and legs,” Helm said. “That really gets them good.”
The three graduated from the Westmore Academy of Cosmetic Arts in Los Angeles with dreams of working in the television or movie industry. Instead, they spent their days in the sun at Fort Iriwn supporting the war effort. They do not have make-up trailers or craft services, but the women said they would rather be at Fort Irwin than in Hollywood.
“It’s very rewarding,” Saunders said, “much more than
the sets.”
And what makes the blood girls so good, they cannot tell you. The recipe for the fake blood they use is a military secret, Helm said.
Amputees are a recent addition to the box, the training grounds in the Mojave Desert dotted with simulated Iraqi villages. John Wagstaffe, a
spokesman for Fort Irwin, said they were added to the medical trauma training simulations last year as part of a push to increase the similarities between Fort Irwin and Iraq by Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, the commanding general at Fort Irwin.

Really scary work
By AARON AUPPERLEE
Greg Vice cannot clean-up before he goes home from work and that can cause problems at the hotel at Fort Irwin where he sometimes stays.
As an actor in the box at Fort Irwin, the simulated Iraq used for training, Vice leaves work covered in dirt and fake blood. The blood comes off with hot water, Vice said, but the cleaning process bloodies — fake bloodies — many towels. Vice said the maids that work at the hotel once thought there had been a murder in his room.
“We did give them a good scare,” he said.