Military Forms Guide

DA Form 7595-5-6 — TRANSPORT A CASUALTY USING A LITTER

transport a casualty using a litter

Every entry on DA Form 7595-5-6 exists because a record system needs it in writing. The form's official title is TRANSPORT A CASUALTY USING A LITTER, and it is raised whenever an office must transport a casualty using a litter in a way that survives the departure of everyone involved. Memory does not transfer between assignments; a filed document does. The edition dated May 2014, status not stated, is what stands here, spread across 1 page(s) and about 133 fields — a count that reflects how much detail the receiving system requires, not how much the drafter wishes to give.

The form has an author and an occasion, held by different authorities. TRADOC owns the content and reshapes it when what is being recorded changes. TC 8-800 governs the event that calls for the form and the route the finished document takes afterwards. Keeping those two apart is what allows a procedure to be amended without the page being rebuilt each time.

Identification precedes substance for a structural reason. Name, identification number, organisation and date of preparation are how the finished document is located in a file or a database; the body of the form is what someone reads after the search has succeeded. Spell the name as official records spell it, since the search runs against those records and not against habit.

Much of the form's behaviour follows from its being a fixed page. Tab order was set at build time along the reading sequence, which is why tabbing catches boxes a pointer passes over. Exclusive groups release one choice when another is made because a record cannot carry two answers to a single question. Single-line fields refuse to wrap because every entry must print where the layout expects it — text beyond the width is lost at the margin, visible on screen to the end. That is what remarks areas and continuation sheets are for. Marking a field that does not apply matters for a related reason: emptiness is ambiguous, and a reviewer reading the file later cannot distinguish an omission from a decision.

The signature is the point at which entries become an assertion someone stands behind, so it follows everything else and its absence leaves a draft. Countersignatures by reviewing, approving or witnessing officials each carry their own weight and are dated at signing, which is how the file preserves the order of responsibility. Seen that way, the familiar errors are not clerical trivia: an unanswered mandatory field, digits transposed in an identification number, day and month reversed, and residue from a reused file each put something false or unresolved into a document that will be relied upon.

The Privacy Act statement is on the page because collecting personal information requires the collector to disclose the terms first — the authority relied on, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether an answer is required or may be withheld. That order is the point: the statement is read before the entries it governs, since consent given afterwards is not consent. Once completed, the copy is a personal record and carries the handling obligations that attach to one.

Download the form

Why several files for one page? Because the form has to be completed in a headquarters and in places without a workstation, and PDF covers both. The fillable pdf holds interactive fields that fix each entry in place and remove handwriting from the equation. The printable pdf is the same layout without those fields, meant for a printer and a pen. Neither is a lesser copy of the other; each answers a condition the other cannot.

Where a file opens matters more than it appears to. A browser will display a pdf, but browser viewers were built to read documents, and some accept keystrokes into fields they never intended to store — the entries are gone at tab close, without warning, because saving was never part of what that viewer does. A dedicated reader is built around the file's own structure and keeps what you enter.

Downloads are free and unregistered. The material was published for general use, and the files are passed on unaltered.

What the form asks for

  • ContentArea1
  • Date1
  • Eval_Comments
  • Fail1_a
  • Fail1_b
  • Fail1_c
  • Fail2_a
  • Fail2_b
  • Fail2_c
  • Fail3_a
  • Fail3_b
  • Fail3_c
  • Fail4_a
  • Fail4_b
  • Fail4_c
  • Fail5_a
  • Fail5_b
  • Fail5_c
  • FinalEval
  • InitialEval
  • Page1
  • PageArea1
  • Pass1_a
  • Pass1_b

Disposition is prescribed, not chosen. TC 8-800 names the destination, whether that is a specific office, the unit administrative channel or the personal record, and the applicable records schedule governs how long it survives there. Both rules exist to keep the file consistent across offices with different habits. Take your copy before the document leaves, since it will not come back.

Series and number are how the DA series signals which documents belong together, and the grouping follows real process boundaries: a shared proponent or directive usually means a shared purpose. A form cited on the face of another is part of that same transaction, and continuation sheets, covers and transmittals complete it.

An edition marks the form at a point in a process that keeps moving, and the date printed on the page is what distinguishes one from another. Since a saved file never announces its own obsolescence, compare its date against the current edition before using it again. Prior executions remain valid: the change applies forward, and a record is read against the edition it was written under.

It is worth being plain about what this page is within all of the above. The files are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents, offered for download by a site with no official standing and no part in issuing anything. That matters because the machinery described here — proponency, prescribing directives, records schedules — runs entirely elsewhere. Nothing written here is legal advice, and no statement can be made about whether an office will accept a given document. TRADOC and the administrative office servicing your unit answer questions of entry, requirement and eligibility, and they are the ones positioned to.

Questions and answers

What is DA Form 7595-5-6?
TRANSPORT A CASUALTY USING A LITTER
Which edition is current?
May 2014
Who is responsible for this form?
TRADOC
In which formats can it be downloaded?
PDF

Other forms in the series