Fortunately for two soldiers in Alaska, an off-duty medic was in the area. The two were attacked by a bear earlier this month. But they both will live thanks to the off-duty medic who gave first aid.
The two were doing an exercise at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. That's when a brown bear attacked the two of them. They managed to scare away the animal using bear spray. Meanwhile, combat medic Sgt. Zachariah Clark learned about the attack. He immediately sprung into action and went to their location.
"My first thought was, 'There's two soldiers. They don't know where they are,'" Clark told Army.mil. "'They're alone. They're afraid and they might be dying. I need to get to them.'" The medic went through deep snow to get to his fellow soldiers. "As we were pushing through the rough terrain, I was finding groups of soldiers that hadn't been contacted or notified of the incident yet," Clark said. "I said, 'Hey, come to the sound of my voice. You follow me.'"
Bear Attack Victims
Unfortunately, the medic didn't have his usual medic bag.
"As a medic, I prefer to work out of my aid bag, but being that I was conducting land nav, I didn't have my aid bag with me. We went with what we had that day —we hustled. We moved to the casualties. Had we not done that, I don't know what would have happened to those casualties," he said.
Working with what he had, Clark was able to provide first aid to the two soldiers attacked by the bear. That helped save their lives. Meanwhile, Alaska Game and Fish regional supervisor Cyndi Wardlow also released a statement.
She said, "We've collected samples to try to get a positive identification on species and gender. It was originally reported as a brown bear, but there were no other witnesses who saw the bear other than the victims so we'll be waiting on genetic samples to confirm."
