In March 2000, at a Rand Corp. conference session on the medical support of urban military operations, John Holcomb ruefully acknowledged that the tools for controlling bleeding in battle had not advanced much since the Trojan War. Gauze and pressure—that was it. An Army trauma surgeon, Dr. Holcomb had served on the ill-fated mission in Mogadishu in October 1993, when 18 Army Rangers died, many from excessive blood loss.
