This is Jockel Podcast number 386 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

Even after the bullet cut through his leg and severed his femoral artery,

first Lieutenant David R. Bernstein had a chance.

The shooting stopped quickly and a soldier trained in combat medical care was at Bernstein's

side almost immediately.

Helicopters landed and minutes later the young platoon leader was surrounded by four

surgeons and all the equipment of a modern battlefield trauma center.

Lieutenant Bernstein died that night in Iraq, despite getting the best emergency medical

care the Army had to offer.

The doctors who specialize in combat injuries and who reviewed the details of the case provided

by the son, question whether the 24-year-old West Point graduate might have lived if the

Army had had something else to offer.

A $20 nylon and plastic tourniquet.

Bernstein was riding in the passenger seat of a humvee near Kirk Cook on October 18,

2003, part of a three-vehicle convoy of the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

When Iraqi insurgents ambushed the convoy with rifle fire and rocket propelled grenades.

According to Joshua Sam's former Army specialist who was driving the humvee that day,

Bernstein was shot through his left thigh at an angle, leaving an entry wound about an

inch and a half above his knee and an exit wound about four inches above his knee.

Sam's who had been trained under the Army's combat life-saver program to treat trauma

injuries tried to use the cotton straps from a standard field dressing to put a makeshift

...