Friday, October 06, 2017

Fullbore Friday

What happens when character is braced by training and fate finds both at a place and time they are both needed?

We found out during the attack in Las Vegas. Just one of many stories;
A veteran Marine and his friends sprung into action in an attempt to save dozens of lives during the Las Vegas massacre.
Taylor Winston, 29, was close to the righthand side of the stage when gunfire rained down at the Route 91 Harvest festival. He said the first gunshots sounded like fireworks, but he soon realized people were screaming and saw bodies drop to the ground.

Winston, a sergeant who served in Iraq, and Jenn Lewis fled with the crowd.
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But Winston and Lewis didn’t abandon their fellow music lovers. They spotted a work truck near the venue, with no owner in sight, and commandeered it to transport victims to the hospital, Winston told The Daily Beast.
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“Jenn and I luckily found a truck with keys in it and started transporting priority victims to the hospital and made a couple trips and tried to help out the best we could until more ambulances could arrive,” Winston said.

A designer for the Country Rebel social network, Winston has been to country music festivals before and said he figured one or two work trucks would still have the keys inside. “So I just crossed my fingers and it turned out to work out,” Winston said.

In two trips, Winston and Lewis said they transported about two dozen people to the hospital. Victims were piled into the back seat and truck bed. Winston told people to apply pressure to the wounds, as he sped to Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center, wanting to get people there “before they bled out.”
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Winston served in the military from 2006 to 2011, doing a tour in Iraq before he was honorably discharged, he said.
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After his hospital trips were over, Winston learned that he saved the life of a friend’s sister. In the mad rush, he didn’t remember anyone’s faces.
“I was in such a speedy movement I didn’t assess anyone’s faces or anything,” Winston said. “Just wounds and who was most critical. I was just trying to be efficient and get the most serious critical condition people to the hospital first.”

Winston and Lewis were able to flag down a squad car while en route, and the cop put on the vehicle’s flashers, escorting them through traffic.
BZ Marine, and the rest of you great Americans.

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