We're re-learning how to stop someone "bleeding out" from a catastrophic wound, to tourniquet under fire and try not to get the giggles when the fake guts spilling into the Scottish instructor's T-shirt look like Cumberland sausages.
We have to do these courses every three years. The courses save lives. Anyone who covers a war zone for a company like Sky News needs to have some basic understanding of how to stay alive when the going gets a bit tough.
There's lots of discussion about the decisions that take us into harm's way. About the motivations for risking life when "the punter" may be indifferent to the truth on the ground in Mosul, or some other far-flung, fly-blown khazi of a country that few can find on a map.
Let's be clear. Journalists (we call ourselves hacks) are not charity workers. We are motivated by ego, by the lust for glory. And a glory in lust (war correspondents are sexier than accountants). Careers are fed the carrion of our fellow human beings.
We are vultures.
But many have died in pursuit of these base instincts.
Men like Sky cameraman Mick Deane who, at the age of 62, filmed a government massacre on the streets of Cairo from the perspective of the victims and paid with his life for this commitment.
Lately in Mosul, colleagues like Stuart Ramsay and his team have been shot at, blown up, and subjected to hours of mortal terror in an effort to enlighten the viewer and reader.
Writing about Vietnam, Michael Herr said in Dispatches that "war is what we had instead of happy childhoods", or something like that. I remember but I have not checked.
Anyone who has been at war will understand that.
Yes, being where history is happening is a very powerful drug. I admit to being an addict.
But I am also proud of being part of a clan that believes that the truth is worth discovering and sometimes it can be horrifying to find it out.
I do not consider many "journalists" who work in some parts of the print newspaper industry to be part of that clan.
It's risky to say so as the British tabloids are as vindictive as they are pernicious. Deliberately misinforming debate about race, immigration, economic policy - you name it, they bend it.
But we live in a Chinese curse. In interesting times.
Fascism is on the rise. Outright racists look set to get into the highest offices in the land in America. It's now conceivable that the National Front may take the French presidency. And the so-called "liberal elite" is cowering.
Nothing seems to silence rational fact-driven debate like that invocation that "the people have spoken".
Yes, there was a (non-mandatory) referendum on Brexit that went against the Remainers. Yes, Donald Trump has been elected democratically.
But these events have been seen, by some, as a licence for bigots to express their hitherto hidden if muffled views.
Many newspapers in this country are fuelling this bigotry with inaccurate nasty articles. They know who they are.
Sometimes I despise what they say. But I would die for their right to say it.
I'm not sure that the same could be said for all those who claim to be journalists. Give me a hack any day.
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