The Film is in the Can

Actually the video is on a bunch of little SD cards each about the size of a postage stamp. I spent the week of March 14^th at Fort Polk watching a massive exercise, mostly through a camera eye lens. Almost 4,000 soldiers and hundreds of vehicles moved in, and were presented with a theoretical massive explosion and radiation release at a theoretical nuclear plant at the theoretical town of Fullerton, LA.  I learned the Army is very good at treating theoretical things as if they were real. Nobody jokes, nobody cuts corners, nobody says “Oh well, it’s not real.” There is a total acceptance that they may have to do this for real someday, and the only way to be ready is to treat today as if it were that day.

To an outsider the process is confusing but not chaotic. You get the impression that every single soldier knows what he or she is supposed to be doing, and is performing in a complicated dance in which every other soldier has a complementary place. The confusion is because you don’t know the dance, and it goes away when suddenly some piece of work – a row of vehicles, a set of medical tents, a bunch of soldiers suddenly converging on the same place at the same time – comes together with no real advance notice. One minute everybody is running around and the next minute there is this result.

PHOTO: Soldiers erect a tent for the decontamination line.

There were all kinds of major functions at work –military police, medical, transportation, aviation, engineers, logistics, civilian law enforcement, and civil defense agencies. My focus was on the three chemical companies, totaling about 270 personnel. They conducted two main missions. One was reconnaissance and surveillance, or R & S. This consisted of going into an area designated as radioactive, wearing protective gear, and finding out what hazards were there to threaten rescuers and medical personnel who would come in later. The other mission was Mass Casualty Decontamination, or MCD. This consisted of assessing the condition of civilian casualties – some walking, some wounded, all presumed contaminated – doing triage and then decontaminating them so that medical personnel could treat them safely.

The civilians are represented by role players from nearby communities, and I mean these people Play Roles! There was screaming and begging and retching, and falling down in convulsions. All of which the soldiers had to deal with while keeping the lines moving.

So now I am back home for the editing. The first step is to go through everything and pick out all the pieces that, when strung together, will tell the story. More to come.

PHOTO: Soldiers in protective gear interact with stranded civilians.