I once used my hands as a tourniquet. If he couldn’t even do that, it must have been a pretty desperate situation!
We had a great ships Doc that taught us a lot of combat aide.
I used it years later when a Porche nearly took the leg off a pedestran in Geneva. My belt and finally my fingers stopped the bleeding until the medics took over. You can’t second guess but training helps too.
It could be that the injured limb was completely encased in mangled metal, and they could not even get a single hand into the area. Just awful.