SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Former KY3 News anchor/reporter Jerry Jacob heads to the next phase of his Army training this week.  He recently finished his combat medic training at Camp Bullis.

   Jacob resigned from KY3 and left for U.S. Army boot camp in January.  He joined the Army after years of waiting for it to raise its age limit for new recruits to 42.  He turned 42 just days after enlisting.

  In March, Specialist Jacob graduated from basic training in Georgia at the top of his class. This month, he graduated again, this time from his advanced individual training -- combat medic training that culminates in one huge final field test.

  Every soldier at Camp Bullis is on guard.

  "It’s not playtime. You may see people smiling and laughing but they know seargeants are watching and you better know what you're doing and do it,” said Jacob. "They take this very seriously."

  So does Jacob.

  "This is the final exam,” he said two weeks ago.  “We’re in the middle of it right now.

  "If you can't cut it here, they won't let you go."

   Jacob was in the middle of an eight-day field test.  Some days started early – like 2 a.m.  During four days of the test, he and his fellow combat medics went through a series of real war situations.

  "We give them a glimpse of what they're going to see,” said Sgt. Barry White.

  "It's a culminating effect of everything they've learned from the last 18 or 19 weeks,” said Capt. Connie Welch. "They get to run with everything they know to try to save lives before they hit the real battlefield in three to four months."

   The combat medics took turns on stretchers, assigned not only their wounds, but their real life and death reactions, taken from actual combat case records.

  "The soldiers are getting realistic training here,” said Lt. Kimi Damassia.

  In the middle of the training, anything can happen.

  "Help me man, gas!” yelled a training participant.  “Put your mask on right now."

  "Remember the basics," Damassia reminded them.

  Among the basics for a combat medic: how to start an intravenous treatment and how to stop arterial bleeding, which is now the priority on battlefields today. That’s because 90 percent of all soldiers who have died in recent wars from wounds that should have been survivable bled to death.  That's what Jacob and other combat medics are working to change.

   "It goes back to the initial reason for anybody being in this field: that there's a soldier out there bleeding to death and no one to help him.  Are you kidding me? Nobody to just put a tourniquet on the right way.  If we can do that, we can save nine-tenths who had survivable injuries,” said Jacob.

  After every exercise comes the evaluation.  It's a constant learning process that officers say will follow these newest combat medics onto the battlefield and throughout their careers.  It’s a new kind of career for Jacob that he says has turned out to be a perfect fit.

  "What better way to serve than to literally serve?” he asked.

  Jacob again graduated at the top of his class.