New York Army National Guard Specialist Brady Douglass, a Queens resident and a medic in the 1^st Battalion 69^th Infantry—the “Fighting 69th” has earned the Army’s coveted Expert Field Medical Badge.

Douglass was one of 29 medics -- out of 239 members of the Active Army, the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard – who received the award following two weeks of testing at Fort Drum in Jefferson County.

He is a member of the 1^st Battalion 69^th Infantry’s Headquarters Company, based at the Lexington Avenue Armory in Manhattan.

The training and testing started on Aug. 20, and was capped with a graduation ceremony on Sept. 2.

In his civilian career, Douglass works as a bio-medical engineer for Zwanger-Pesiri Radiology, a company with several locations on Long Island.

Douglass was one of 10 New York Army National Guard medics who participated in the competition.

Created in 1965, the Expert Field Medical Badge, or EFMB, recognizes exceptional competence and outstanding performance by field medical personnel.

Along with passing a 60-question written examination and completing a 12-mile march with full back pack within three hours, EFMB candidates must correctly perform dozens of military and medical tasks. These include day and night land navigation, control bleeding with tourniquet and other aids, triage and evacuate casualties, administer intravenous fluids, move under direct fire, react to indirect fire, and react to improvised explosive devices.

Only 12 percent of the candidates who participated at Fort Drum earned the EFMB; so far this year, the EFMB graduation rate is 19 percent Army wide.

Testing for these tasks takes place on the combat training lanes, and candidates must perform many of them simultaneously, such as treating patients while under simulated indirect fire.

He found the lanes to be the most difficult part of the EFMB testing, and in order to succeed, he forced himself to "baby-step it all the way,” Douglass said.

"The level of detail that was required, it was easy to mess up any part it," he said. "You can get so overwhelmed with everything you have to do, it really helps to take things one step at a time."

The tests are also physically demanding, he said. After finishing the 12- mile road march. “I was so tired, I was ready to collapse,” Douglass said.