A familiar friend in the port, RFA Argus, returns to Falmouth on Saturday after taking part in the major military operation Exercise Joint Warrior off Scotland, involving more than half a dozen nations, 13,000 personnel and over 30 ships – a dozen of them British.

Exercise Joint Warrior involves all three services but is Europe’s largest naval exercise. More than 34 warships are taking part from the UK, US, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Turkey and Norway with the aim to test the high readiness of the forces involved and the range of capabilities available for short notice operations across the globe.

As well as the marines exercising their amphibious skills, the 12 Royal Navy ships and their international counterparts will be tested in air defence, surface attack and underwater warfare during the three weeks at sea.

RFA Argus the Primary Casualty Receiving Facility (PCRF) had on board a 250 strong group of medical staff during the exercise.

Commander Danny Follington, the Commanding Officer of the PCRF, said that many lessons in critical, battlefield care had been learnt from Afghanistan and, as a consequence, lives were being saved.

He said: “Deployed hospital care is invested in this vessel. Our Maritime in Transit Care Team can fly forward, ventilate, resuscitate, give blood transfusions and bring patients back. It’s one of the lessons we learned from Afghanistan.”

Set to the same standards as any NHS hospital, the PCRF is tested twice a year and, under Exercise Medical Endeavour, the staff are put through their paces with a number of challenging scenarios to ensure their skills and the set-up is fully validated.

Volunteers are used as casualties with specialist make-up depicting terrible injuries with a number of different issues which the team must work to resolve.

RFA Argus is also an aviation training ship that works with the Royal Navy across the world, but also holds the specialist PCRF facility on board that can be used in global operations.

Able to receive casualties from the sea, in the event of maritime attack, and also from land when supporting Royal Marine or tri-service operations, the facility ensures that casualties are treated and stable before eventually moving them to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham for longer-term rehabilitation.

RFA Argus is set up in the same way as any trauma hospital. There are four teams that can perform resuscitation, ten intensive care unit beds, 100 ward beds, a full surgical team, microbiologists, radiologists, nursing teams all of which work at either Derriford or Queen Alexandra hospitals in Plymouth and Portsmouth directly augmenting the NHS.

The PCRF also boasts state-of-the-art equipment including a 64-slice CT scanner, installed during the last refit. Used in Afghanistan, and also in the NHS, these scanners have been integral to saving the lives of British servicemen and women wounded in action.