Feturing TAPS offers peer-based support, crisis care, casualty casework assistance and grief and trauma resources, all free. Unlike most programs offered through the military, TAPS provides ongoing help to anyone grieving the death of a loved one in the military, regardless of the relationship to the deceased, where they live, or the circumstances of the death.
The offensive in southern Afghanistan hasn't come without its casualties for U.S. and NATO forces there. Stripes reporter Drew Brown tells us that over the last few weeks helicopter ambulance crews from the 2nd Platoon "Gypsies" of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade have pulled dozens of wounded - and sometimes dead - U.S., British and Afghan troops from the battlefield. Brown's dispatch takes you to the battlefield and safely back out again with a group of dedicated medevac crewmembers.
n April, the 3rd Infantry Division (ID) expanded its use of the Army's battlefield electronic medical recording (EMR) system, Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4), to two more garrison aid stations at Fort Stewart, Ga. The 1st Battalion, 64th Armor and 26 Brigade Support Battalion joined the Special Troops Battalion Aid Station at Fort Stewart and the 603rd Aviation Support Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., as the first group of 21 garrison aid stations led by the 3rd ID to discontinue the use of paper medical records.