THE DUSTOFFER - DUSTOFF Association

DUSTOFFER
THE DUSTOFF Association Newsletter
Fall/Winter 2010
In this issue:
California National Guardsmen
Receive Medals for Combat Hoist
bc
IFR Approach into Thu Dau Mot
bc
32nd Annual DUSTOFF Reunion
Info on pp. 26-27
Kandahar, Afghanistan—U.S. Army Soldiers carry a critically wounded
American Soldier on a litter to a waiting DUSTOFF helicopter.
Fall/Winter 2010
PAGE 1
President’s Message
Dear Members of the DUSTOFF Association: As I iterated
in my last letter, each day, our Heroes continue to add their
courage and commitment to the history of the DUSTOFF
tradition, the Army, and this great nation. I know you continue to keep them and their families in your hearts and
prayers. We continue to remember our fallen comrades
and call to mind their sacrifice and dedicated, unhesitating,
service to our fallen forces. We love them all and will keep
their families in our prayers.
I am continually reminded of the talent our DUSTOFF
Aviators possess when I meet them throughout our ranks,
serving as commanders, hospital administrators, comptrollers, and the numerous other areas of concentration in the
AMEDD. We are represented at the highest levels of the
AMEDD by DUSTOFF Aviators, who continue to serve in
the finest of tradition. Mentor and remind our young DUSTOFFERs of the tremendous opportunities that exist in the
AMEDD. Our legacy continues to live in the remembrance
of greats like LTC Paul Bloomquist, who was recognized by
his induction into the Utah Aviation Hall of Fame, and most
recently by the impending induction of SPC5 Steve Hook
Vice President:
Scott Drennon..... william.drennon@us.army.mil
into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame on April 18, 2011.
Continue to support Bob Mitchell and MEPD in their
fight not only to continue the legacy of DUSTOFF, but also
in the maintenance of what we know is a highly respected
and needed special mission. I ask that you support them in
every way possible and offer your assistance. My thanks
and congratulations to Dan Gower—first, for keeping me
straight, and second for another well-deserved retirement.
Again, take the opportunity to shake the hands and pass
your thanks to the Soldiers, staffers, and commanders who
are in the fight to retain MEDEVAC as a combat multiplier
for our military. This is an every day battle that requires
engagement by all of us.
I look forward to the next reunion at Panama City. I
would like to see us reach out to those whom we have not
seen in many years and invite them to the reunion. I ask that
we all continue to seek recruits into the association, especially our young Soldiers. Their participation is tantamount
to our continued maintenance of our great tradition and history and our advocacy of the greatest mission in which any
Soldier could hope to serve.
As I grow nearer to retirement from the U.S. Army I
reflect on the many years that I was afforded the opportunity
to serve our great nation as a MEDEVAC Aviator with the
finest Soldiers on God’s earth. I had the good fortune to be
mentored by superb leaders like Scott Heintz, Ray Collins,
Tom Bailey, and a legion of superb peers and NCOs. I trust
that you are inculcating that same legacy of service, dedication, and selflessness demonstrated to me in my career.
Our Soldiers superbly execute a dangerous mission under
the most challenging conditions, with great professionalism
and courage. We are all extremely proud of them and their
families for their service and sacrifice. It has been my honor
to serve as your DUSTOFF Association President. See you
in Panama City.
Treasurer:
Dan Gower.......... treasurer@dustoff.org
DUSTOFF!
Bryant Harp
DUSTOFF Association
Executive Council
President:
Bryant Harp......... bryant.harp@us.army.mil
Executive Director:
Dan Gower.......... ed@dustoff.org
Secretary:
John McMahan.... secretary@dustoff.org
Historian:
Patrick Zenk........ historian@dustoff.org
DUSTOFFer Editor:
Jim Truscott......... jtrus5@aol.com
Web Site: http://www.dustoff.org
Ronald Huether... ron@hueyproductions.com
uuuuu
DUSTOFFer layout & design
Susan Gower..................................... rockgower@yahoo.com
Printing
Ink, Spot, Ink Printing & Publishing
PAGE 2
DUSTOFFer Inducted into
AAAA Hall of Fame
With great pride and happiness we announce that our
own DUSTOFF Hall of Fame member, Steve Hook,
has been successfully nominated and will be inducted
into the Army Aviation Association of America’s Hall of
Fame. He will join DUSTOFFers MAJ Charles Kelly,
MG Pat Brady, CW4 Mike Novosel, MG Spurgeon Neel,
CW2 Louis Rocco, and CW3 Hugh “Buck” Thompson
in that esteemed group. The induction ceremonies will
be held on Monday, 18 April 2011, during the Army
Aviation Association of America Annual Convention
at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center
in Nashville, Tennessee.
The DUSTOFFer
Letters to The DUSTOFFer
In case you have not heard, my book, War Is Not All Hell, has
now been published and is available by e-mailing me at wcovington2@cfl.rr.com (enscripted and signed) and/or via any of
the .com bookstores, i.e., Amazon, Borders, Booksamillion,
BarnesandNoble, etc.
The book is about my flight school experiences and the two
years I served in Vietnam. Rather than write about the blood
and guts aspects of Vietnam, I chose to emphasize the comraderie, friendships, humor, and a lot of the more positive
aspects of my experiences during my two years there flying
Dustoff. If you read the book, I hope you find it both enjoyable
and interesting.
Take care, and I hope to see you all at Panama City Beach in
February.
Bill Covington
DUSTOFF Association
Past Presidents
Chuck Mateer (1980–81)................ deceased
John Hosley (1981–82)................... mjohnhosley@gmail.com
Byron Howlett (1982–83)............... bybkhow@satx.rr.com
Ed Taylor (1983–84)....................... eddotaylor@aol.com
Thomas Scofield (1984–85)............ tomsco@erols.com
Joseph Madrano (1985–86)............ jmadrano@satx.rr.com
Jim Ritchie (1986–87)
Donald Conkright (1987–88).......... dconkright@sbcglobal.net
Roy Hancock (1988–89)................. southflite@yahoo.com
Glen Melton (1989–90).................. deceased
Gerald Nolan (1990–91)................. gerrynolan@aol.com
Jim Truscott (1991–92)................... jtrus5@aol.com
Roger Opio (1992–93).................... roger.opio@amedd.army.mil
Ed Bradshaw (1993–94)................. edwardb421@aol.com
Robert Romines (1994–96)............ deceased
Daniel Gower (1996–97)................ aggiedustoff@yahoo.com
Charlie Webb (1997–98)................. dustoff6@hotmail.com
Herb Coley (1998–99).................... coleyhs@earthlink.net
Merle Snyder (1999–2000)............. snyder@belmontcc.com
Gregg Griffin (2000–01)................. greg.griffin@us.army.mil
Jeff Mankoff (2001–02).................. jgmankoff@satx.rr.com
Ken Crook (2002–03)..................... kcrook@satx.rr.com
Art Hapner (2003–04).................... hapnera@erols.com
Ernie Sylvester (2004–05) ............. erniesylvest@verizon.net
Garry Atkins (2005-06).................. garrylynatkins@aol.com
Doug Moore (2006-07)................... doug.moore@amedd.army.mil
Timothy Burke (2007-08)............... tim.burke@us.army.mil
Robert Mitchell (2008-10).............. robert.mitchell4@us.army.mil
Founder
Looking for MEDEVAC pilots
who saved my life
I’m a Marine Amtracker who was attached to an Army
unit that was rescued by an Army MEDEVAC helicopter on
May 26, 1968, in the early evening outside of Hue, Vietnam,
near Coco Island.
I was MEDEVACed out of a hot zone with two other
Army Infantrymen in the only MEDEVAC that day. We were
flown to Phu Bai Hospital, and I was never able to thank the
pilots and crew who saved my life.
I don’t know the Army unit or operation name and have
been unsuccessful so far in finding these men. I would appreciate that opportunity and would be very grateful for any
information anyone can provide me.
Sincerely, SGT Brian Anderson.
Email: brian@knapptedesco.com
Phone: 515.232.8501
(From the Vietnam Helicopter Pilot Association [VHPA]
magazine.)
DUSTOFF H-19 FOCUS!
Submitted by DUSTOFFer Vince Cedola
Here’s a short story! It’s 1963 during the Cuban
missile crisis! There’s an immediate PCS to Fort
Benning to activate the 54th Med. Det. I joined up
with Charlie Kelly, Frank Copeland, Bruce Hook,
two others whose names elude me, and a National
Guard lieutenant. We were sent to Sharpe Army
Depot in California to pick up our aircraft to support
the Cuban situation.
We arrived to find five H-19C models from
China Mag, Korea Mag, and other parts of the
world. Charlie Kelly asked us if anyone had been
checked out in the Charley model. We all looked at
each other, and the National Guard guy said, “I am.
That’s all we had!”
Kelly told him that he was now the unit IP and to
take each one of us around the pattern and sign us
off. Next day we left to fly these dogs back to Benning, where the maintenance company had a lottery
on how many would make it back!
Miraculously, we got all five back, and thank
God, the Cuban crisis ended before we had to fly
them again!
Tom “Egor” Johnson......................... gentjohnson@cox.net
Members at Large
David Litteral...................................david.litteral@us.army.mil
Ron Wilson......................................ron.wilson@ndgi.com
Jon Fristoe........................................jon.fristoe@us.army.mil
Mike Bishop....................................mike.bishop1@us.army.mil
Fall/Winter 2010
PAGE 3
MEDEVACs Get Faster in Afghan War Zone
D
An article written by Gregg Zoroya in USA Today, December 2009.
uring the past year, the U.S.
military reduced from 100 to
42 minutes the average time
it takes for a badly wounded Service
member in Afghanistan to reach a hospital, even as the casualty rate tripled,
according to military commanders.
Five new field hospitals were
constructed to reduce flight distances,
and the number of medical evacuation
helicopters was tripled to 36 from 12,
say Air Force COL Warren Dorlac and
Army LTC Kyle Burrow, who supervise
MEDEVAC duties in Afghanistan.
Last January, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates called for improved
MEDEVAC times in Afghanistan.
He complained before Congress that
the standard in Iraq was to deliver a
wounded Soldier within an hour, and
this was not close to being matched in
Afghanistan.
“The Secretary didn’t understand
and wasn’t willing to accept there being
two different standards for those two
theaters,” says Pentagon spokesman
Geoff Morrell. “To him, it just made
no sense.”
Although improved survival rates
are the goal of faster patient delivery,
field commanders are still calculating
whether quicker times have saved
lives, says Marine Corps LTC Joseph
Kloppel, a spokesman for U.S. Central
Command. A complicating factor, he
says, is that survival is determined
largely by wound severity, regardless
of the travel time.
Although improved survival rates are the goal
of faster patient delivery, field commanders are
still calculating whether
quicker times have saved
lives. . . .
The military’s leading medical
advisory panel, the Defense Health
Board, noted in August that most of
the preventable combat deaths in Iraq
and Afghanistan are Service members
who bled to death, in many cases before
Pilot Philosophy
•Three more dangerous things in aviation:
2 LT, “Based on my experience. . . .”
Warrant Officers, “Watch this!”
COL, “I used to know how to do this. . . .”
•A checkride ought to be like a skirt—short enough to be
interesting, but long enough to cover everything.
•Speed is life—altitude is life insurance.
•The similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots:
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies.
If an air traffic controllers screws up, the pilot dies.
reaching surgery.
Currently, 96% of the wounded in
Afghanistan survive wounds, compared with 95% in Iraq. The average
MEDEVAC times for urgent cases in
Iraq is 55 minutes, Kloppel says. So
far, 855 U.S. troops have died serving
in or near Afghanistan, according to the
Pentagon, and more than 4,600 have
been wounded.
President Obama is sending 30,000
additional U.S. Service members to
Afghanistan, raising troop levels there
to about 100,000 by summer. Kloppel
says MEDEVAC resources will be
added to meet the increased need.
The improved medical evacuation
rates pertain only to the most dire
wound or injury cases requiring “. .
. emergency, short-notice evacuation
to save life, limb, or eyesight, or to
prevent complications that could lead
to more serious illness or permanent
disability,” says Air Force MAJ John
Redfield, a Central Command spokesman.
These “urgent” cases account for
5% of all medical evacuation missions,
Redfield says. The vast majority of
MEDEVAC missions are for transporting patients who are in better condition
between facilities.
January was one of the lightest
casualty months of 2009, with only
37 urgent-care medical evacuation
missions. And yet three out of four of
those missions took well over an hour,
according to statistics provided by U.S.
Central Command. The average time
was more than 1½ hours, statistics
show.
By November, the average time
had been cut to 42 minutes. During
the busiest casualty months of July and
August, with dozens of medical evacuations, more than 80% finished in less
than an hour, the numbers show. As of
last month, 90% finished in less than
an hour. 
•If something hasn’t broken on your helicopter, it’s about
to.
PAGE 4
The DUSTOFFer
The Future of the Flight Medic
A
The January 31, 2010, edition of Army Aviation contained a comprehensive review of the Flight Medic
from the perspective of CSM Tod Glidewell, the Aviation Branch’s command sergeant major.
eromedical evacuation has
come a long way since the
concept came about in World
War II. The Korean War and Vietnam
conflict both saw huge leaps in the
number of lives saved over previous
wars by utilizing helicopters as MEDEVAC platforms.
It is my belief now that the Global
War on Terrorism (GWOT) and especially the Afghanistan Theater of
Operations are changing the way we
should train and conduct MEDEVAC
operations. I would like to showcase
what possibly could be the way ahead
in Flight Medic Training.
SSG Matthew S. Kinney is an
instructor at the Flight Medic Course
(FMC), located at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He has two tours in Iraq and one
in Afghanistan, during which he earned
a Silver Star, Distinguished Flying
Cross, and Air Medal with Valor, while
conducting MEDEVAC operations as
a Flight Medic.
I have asked SSG Kinney to consolidate some of what he has seen
and lessons learned into the following
article to aid in the discussion of where
Flight Medic training should possibly
go in the future.
The Evolving Role
Though rotary-wing Air Ambulances were first used in 1944 to evacuate the wounded, there were no Flight
Medics on board. The Flight Medic was
born of necessity in Vietnam, and since
their creation, Flight Medics have come
a long way in their abilities to perform
the mission.
In the past, the role of the flight
Medic was to scoop the wounded
quickly off the battlefield, plug the
holes, and then fly for a short distance
to an appropriate treatment facility and
drop them off.
As the GWOT has evolved, we
found that in some theaters of operation, these skills and knowledge were
adequate, but not completely so for
other theaters or missions. Today’s
mission for the Flight Medic is also
evolving to meet the changing needs
Fall/Winter 2010
and operational requirements.
Although the point of injury (POI)
mission is the same as it has been in the
past, the time it takes to get the patient
to the appropriate medical facility has
increased in some theaters of operation.
Because of the longer evacuation times,
the other task that the Flight Medic has
taken on is the role of critical transport,
where the medics must plan how to
keep the patient stable for extended
periods.
On these missions, the medics pick
up patients who have just had surgery
and have special needs that must be
met. As examples, the patients may be
intubated and need sedation and pain
management, or on a ventilator with a
chest tube and hydroseal. The patients
might require airway suctioning, may
have arterial lines, or be on medication
drips requiring intense monitoring during flight.
The Flight Medic must switch gears
from being an expert in trauma to being
a critical care transport expert having to
manage the patient’s wounds, medications, and equipment.
Expanded Mission =
Expanded Training
The Flight Medics today who are
performing these missions need more
training to meet the new demands
placed upon them. The important
question is how we can improve the
current Flight Medic training to meet
the new needs.
Looking at the civilian models,
the Flight Medic equivalent does not
perform both the POI and critical care
transport mission, and usually does not
have more than one patient. However,
the Army Flight Medic performs both
these missions, often with multiple
patients.
Today’s Flight Medics must fill
any knowledge voids to perform these
demanding missions, either by getting
training from their Flight Surgeons or
Aeromedical Physician Assistants, or
on their own.
Today’s Flight Medic Course consists of 28 training days that cover In-
ternational Trauma Life Support (ITLS)
for Advanced Providers, Advanced
Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), and
Pediatric Education for Pre-Hospital
Professionals (PEPP).
Students receive hyperbaric chamber training to aid in the recognition
of hypoxia. They also receive multiple
iterations of hands-on training and
evaluation using the school’s aircraft
simulators and human patient simulators.
ITLS consists of lectures and
skill stations to include I.V. access
with jugular vein cannulation, I.O.
access, and patient assessment stations.
Students are further taught advanced
airway management and managing
patients on a ventilator.
ACLS consists of EKG interpretation, lethal rhythm identification, cardiac medications, cardioversion, and
defibrillation.
Finding a Viable
Training Bridge
One fix to help bridge the knowledge gap and meet the immediate
operational needs of dealing with the
demands of prolonged transport times
can be to mandate that the Flight Medic
course be followed immediately by the
Joint En-Route Care Course (JECC).
This would bring the training up to six
weeks and add vital skills, such as advanced ventilator and airway management, rapid sequence intubation, and
conscious sedation, as well as advanced
pharmacological interventions.
The United States Army School of
Aviation Medicine (USASAM) has
already realigned all courses, so the
JECC follow-on can be a reality, starting with the next Flight Medic class.
The long term goal to meet present and
emerging needs is to revamp the overall
Flight Medic Course.
USASAM is the centralized point of
training for all Army Flight Medics and
Navy SAR Corpsmen (other Services
and countries are trained, as well).
The skill sets needed for effective
rotary wing transport require training,
(Future, continued on page 7.)
PAGE 5
H
Closing Out the Flight Plan
oward A. Huntsman Jr., a retired LTC in the Medical Service Corps, died on
August 22, 2010, at the age of 85. He entered the Army as a 2LT in July 1951
and became an Army aviator in July 1953. His overseas flight missions were
conducted in Korea, Germany, and Vietnam. As a rotary- and fixed-wing-qualified senior
army aviator, he retired on May 31, 1972. Prior to his Army service, he was a Marine
Corps World War II combat veteran, serving in the southwestern Pacific from August
1944 to November 1945. He is survived by his wife, Margaret, of San Antonio, three
daughters, Lynn McCoy of Van Alstyne, Texas; Kimberly McCarty of Spring, Texas; and
Heather Carter of St. Louis, Missouri; plus four grandchildren and two great grandchildren. LTC Huntsman was a life member of VFW Post 8541; a charter and life member
of the AMEDD’s DUSTOFF Association, and the AMEDD’s Solopilot Society. He was
also a life member of America’s premiere fraternal organization of military pilots, The
Order of the Daedalions.
Please see Walt Harris’s “Memories of Howard Huntsman” on page 20.
D
ustoff 30, WO1/CW4 Michael Don Rominger,
passed away suddenly of a heart attack on June
24, 2010, in Sacramento, California. He was born
in Ada, Oklahoma, August 25, 1948, the son of a World
War II Air Force pilot, and traveled all over the United
States as an “Air Force Brat.” Accepted into Warrant
Officer Candidacy, he knew from the onset the Dust Off
mission could be his only placement, often saying when
pressed by people why he didn’t even desire the flashy
gunships, “I chose to save lives, wanted to save lives, not
take lives.” While in Vietnam, he flew call sign Dustoff
30 for the 45th Medical Company, 44th Medical Brigade,
primarily out of Nui Dat, Vung Tau, and Da Nang, in
support of ANZAC forces, but also flew in support of
American Special Ops. He accrued two Distinguished
Flying Crosses while in Vietnam and was the recipient
of the Silver Star and Bronze Star and more.
WO1/CW4 Michael Don Rominger
DUSTOFF Pilot Don Rominger, with his 45th Medical Company
(Air Ambulance) aircraft in 1968 in the Republic of Vietnam.
Photo provided by his daughter, Lynn Marie Rominger.
LTC Paul A. Bloomquist Inducted into Utah Aviation Hall of Fame
O
n Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, the DUSTOFF Association was honored to participate in a ceremony inducting
LTC Paul A. Bloomquist into the Utah Aviation Hall of
Fame at Hill AFB.
LTC Bloomquist was the 24th person and the first Army
aviator to earn this prestigious honor. LTC Bloomquist was well
represented by his brother Wayne Bloomquist, his family, and
a number of distinguished attendees.
His induction was commemorated by Senator Bob Bennett
and MG Brian Tarbet. Senator Bennett and MG Tarbet spoke
eloquently about the service and sacrifice of LTC Bloomquist,
as well as his untimely death at the hands of terrorists.
LTC Bloomquist’s heroic past was eulogized and served as
the catalyst for honoring all our fallen heroes and the superb
history of Army MEDEVAC.
PAGE 6
The DUSTOFFer
(Future, continued from page 5.)
planning, and preparation. The best
course of action is to fix the knowledge
gap, while building on the skill sets at
the same time, which would break the
Flight Medic Course down into phases
as follows: Phase 1—Distance Learning; maintain the Flight Medic Course
as Phase 2; as Phase 3, the JECC, but
eliminate any redundant classes between the JECC and the FMC to allow
for classes in pharmacology, cardiology, anatomy, physiology, and pediatric
topics. Phase 4 would consist of tasks
included in pre-deployment guidelines,
such as Brigade Combat Team Trauma
Training (BCT3), Tactical Combat
Medical Care Course, and/or Army
Trauma Training Center rotations.
These advanced lesson plans will
build the base of knowledge needed
for the Flight Medic to be independent
operators and to deal with the medical
demands of every kind they may have,
either in a combat environment, or disaster relief, or anything in between.
Additional changes would include
increasing medical patient and airframe
simulation training time and adding
other training adjuncts.
Practice in assessment of patient
skills in a sensory-deprived environment (for example, using an ordinary
stethoscope is not possible during rotary wing flight) would be increased,
and tactical skills, such as individual
radio communications critical to the
MEDEVAC mission while the Flight
Medic is on the ground away from the
aircraft, would be addressed, as would
canine trauma management.
A ten- to twelve-week timeline
would be required to implement this
new training.
USAR MEDEVAC Activation Ceremony
Submitted by LTC Mark D. Young, Director, RC Support Medevac Proponency
Fox Company, 5th Battalion, 159th
Aviation Regiment, the Army Reserve’s
newest MEDEVAC Company, conducted
an activation ceremony Saturday, September 11, 2010. The weather was similar
to that day nine years ago when the World
Trade Center was attacked, but the mood
was far from that fateful day.
CPT William Heine and Acting 1SG
Doug Camden led the first MEDEVAC
Company since 1994 back into the Army
Reserve with well over 120 Soldiers in
the formation, flying a brand new guidon. F Company, nicknamed Phoenix
DUSTOFF, is stationed in beautiful
Clearwater, Florida. Its nickname refers
to the bird that rises from the ashes,
symbolizing MEDEVAC’s return to the
Army Reserve.
On the reviewing stand were LTG
Jack C. Stultz, the Chief of the Army
Reserve; COL Mark Traylor, the Deputy
Commander, 11th Aviation Command;
and Mr. Tom Rice, from Congressman
C.W. Bill Young’s office, who addressed
the company and those in attendance.
General Stultz remarked that he was
proud of everyone in the company and
praised the Soldiers for all the progress
they had made. During his remarks, he
was visibly moved by the sacrifice of the
thousands of service members who have
been killed and wounded since the beginning of the war. F Company’s Soldiers
are already training diligently to prepare
for deployment and to save lives on the
battlefield. F CO is expected to deploy
sometime in 2011. 
Members of F Co 5/159th, the newest MEDEVAC Company in the Army, pose
with CPT Bill Heine, Company Commander, and LTG Stultz, Chief of the Army Reserve,
in front of one of their new HH-60L Blackhawk helicopters.
Ensuring Standardization
Currently, the Flight Medic Course
is not mandatory to be able to serve
as a Flight Medic. In order to ensure
Flight Medic standards across the
board, on-the-job training (OJT) of
Flight Medics would have to be phased
out, while those already in units could
be assessed by medical training teams
from USASAM, and if standards were
met, grandfathered by awarding the
(Future, continued on page 22.)
Fall/Winter 2010
PAGE 7
Crew Performs Combat Hoist—
Rescues Five From Enemy Fire
L
An article in the California National Guard Grizzly, March 2010,
by SGT Jonathan Guibord, 1-168th General Support Aviation Battalion (GSAB)
ast July, in the northern mountains of Afghanistan, the fourman flight crew of Dustoff 24
was flying to their home base after
a grueling 48-hour medical support
mission, when they received an emergency call.
The medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) request came from a U.S. Army
infantry squad-sized element that was
ambushed by anti-American forces
while on foot patrol in the hard-to-reach
Pech River Valley.
The Dustoff 24 Black Hawk helicopter and crew, all assigned to the
California National Guard’s Company
C, 1-168th General Support Aviation
Battalion, were called in to land and
pick up a Soldier with a life-threatening
gunshot wound to the abdomen.
A deadly combination of hazardous
terrain and heavy incoming fire from
elevated positions meant any rescue
attempt would be dangerous for both
the rescuers and the patient.
“We knew pretty much immediately
when we got to the Pech how hot this
[landing zone] was, because of the
OH-58 [helicopters] and the radio traffic,” said SSG Thomas A. Gifford of
Sacramento, who served as crew chief
during the unit’s 10-month Afghanistan
deployment.
A deadly combination of
hazardous terrain and
heavy incoming fire from
elevated positions meant
any rescue attempt would
be dangerous for both
the rescurers and the patient.
Aware of the hostile environment,
the medical crew had to make a quick
decision between following standard
operating procedure and following
From left to right: SSG Thomas A. Gifford, SSG Emmett Spraktes,
CWO4 Brandon Erdmann, and CWO2 Scott St. Aubin, pose for a group photograph after
an award ceremony at Mather Airfield in Sacramento, California, June 13, 2010. During
the ceremony, Spraktes was awarded the Silver Star Medal, while Gifford, Erdmann,
and St.Aubin received the Distinguished Flying Cross with V Device for heroic actions
in Afghanistan, while assigned to the California National Guard’s Company C, 1-168th
General Support Aviation Battalion. Photo by SFC Jesse Flagg, California National Guard.
PAGE 8
their gut.
“Our doctrine is: If there is an ongoing battle, aircraft and other Soldiers
on the ground pacify the area, and then
we come in, grab the Soldier and then
we go,” said SSG Emmett Spraktes,
a combat medic with the unit. “But
we decided as a crew, well before this
incident, that if a Soldier was going to
die if we did not respond, then we go
in anyway.”
That is exactly what the crew did.
As the crew situated themselves to enter the combat zone, they assessed that
there was no available location to land
the aircraft. This meant the crew was
going to need to attempt a maneuver
rarely performed by Army aviators: a
combat hoist.
As the two pilots, CWO Brandon
Erdmann and CWO Scott St. Aubin,
precisely piloted the aircraft toward
the battered platoon, Spraktes began
his hoist to the ground, equipped with
his M-4 rifle, M-9 pistol, and medical
gear, which includes a combat stretcher
referred to as a sked.
During his descent, the enemy
forces were consistently firing near
the aircraft, which caused the crew to
readjust and temporarily stop the hoist,
according to the medic. “I got about
three-quarters of the way down, and
the hoisting stopped, and I was hanging
there,” Spraktes said. “I had totally professional communication with the guys
above,” he joked. “I said, ‘Get me on
the ground now. I am like a [freaking]
piñata down here.’”
Once the medic was on the ground,
the aircraft was cleared to leave its
vulnerable hover and immediately
began loitering a safe distance from
the firefight.
While on the ground, Spraktes,
who acquired much of his paramedic
skills serving as a paramedic with the
California Highway Patrol, found the
severely injured Soldier and started
to work.
(Crew, continued on page 22.)
The DUSTOFFer
IFR Approach into Thu Dau Mot
Most aviators have done some dumb
things during their flying careers, but
ancient DUSTOFFers Walt Harris and
Doug Moore did something incredibly
stupid on a dark and foggy night in Vietnam. Fortunately, they got away with it!
Walt left the Army shortly thereafter
to become an Episcopalian minister and
later retired as an Air Force Chaplain,
so everyone’s convinced someone was
looking over their shoulders while they
had their brains disengaged. Doug wrote
this account of their activities shortly
thereafter.
I
n 1964 we were assigned to the
57th DUSTOFF at Tan Son Nhut
Airbase in Saigon. This was well
before the American combat units
arrived, and there were only about
20,000 Americans scattered around the
countryside in an advisory and support
role. Our small unit of five helicopters
was responsible for covering the entire
III Corps area, and we often flew long
distances to complete our missions.
That was okay, except at night and
when the weather turned sour.
Each of our pilots felt duty-bound
to give it our best shot when someone
was wounded, so we began looking for
assistance from the Air Traffic Control
Center at Tan Son Nhut, where the
small contingent of U.S. Air Force
controllers agreed to help. They began
by placing a tactical map on a wall in
their operations shack, and we marked
the villages and Vietnamese military
bases that we went to on a regular basis.
As time permitted, we flew over those
places at high enough altitude, until the
controllers could “see” us on radar and
record the azimuth and distance on 3X5
cards. Within a short time, they had a
rudimentary system to give us radar
vectors when needed.
Since we were about the only folks
who routinely flew single-ship missions
at night or during bad weather, the Air
Force controllers (Call Sign: Paris
Control) got to know us well. It was
comforting to hear familiar voices giving us headings and distance. It didn’t
take long for them to learn how long we
ought to be on the ground, especially
for night pick-ups, and if we were on
Fall/Winter 2010
the ground longer than usual, we’d hear
them calling, “DUSTOFF, this is Paris
Control, are you off yet?” Oftentimes,
they couldn’t hear our response because
we were belly deep in a rice paddy or
down in a hole in the jungle, and you
could hear the concern rising in their
voices until we were airborne and returned their calls.
He responded that several casualties were badly
wounded and said the fog
was so thick, he couldn’t
see the tops of the trees
where he was standing.
Just before Christmas in 1964, Walt
Harris and I stressed this system to its
limit. In early evening, dense fog began forming, and a Viet Cong sapper
unit used its cover to infiltrate the base
camp of the Vietnamese Army’s Fifth
Infantry Division at Thu Dau Mot, a
fairly large town about 20 miles north
of Saigon.
Once inside, the Viet Cong placed
several satchel charges and retreated
to positions outside the compound. At
that point they began firing into the
compound, and as American advisors
and Vietnamese soldiers poured out of
the buildings to man their defensive
positions, the satchel charges were
detonated. As I recall, two Americans
were seriously wounded, and several
Vietnamese were wounded or killed.
It was drizzling rain when their
call for help came in. We decided to
give it a try, so while I cranked our
UH-1B “Huey” helicopter, Walt called
the tower to get the latest weather.
The tower said they were estimating
500-foot ceilings and less than a mile
visibility, so Walt asked if anyone else
had been out recently. The tower told
us the only other traffic that night had
been a C-47 that landed at Bien Hoa an
hour or so earlier, and its pilot reported
heavy fog over the Saigon area with
tops at about 3000 feet.
I took off to the north and ran into
a bank of fog before crossing the main
runway. I told the tower we had gone
IFR, so he switched us to Paris Control. When Paris answered, I asked for
permission to continue climbing to see
whether we could break out on top, and
if we couldn’t, I told him we would be
requesting a GCA back into Tan Son
Nhut. The controller told us Bien Hoa
Airbase, located about 25 miles to the
northeast, was reporting 1500-foot
ceilings and three miles visibility, so
he gave me a heading toward Bien Hoa
and told me to continue climbing.
At about 3500 feet, we broke out
into a brilliant, moonlit night. The visibility was unlimited horizontally and
above us, but underneath was a solid
layer of fog. From that altitude, we
could see a hole over Bien Hoa, and
its airfield lights were sparkling in the
distance.
Since we were on top, I asked Paris
Control to vector us over Thu Dau Mot,
hoping we might find a hole there too.
The controller gave me a new heading
and told me to remain clear of clouds.
A short time later, he told us Thu Dau
Mot was 10 miles at our 12 o’clock, so
Walt switched to the ground frequency
and made the first call.
The fellow who answered said he
was a former military pilot and would
remain on the radio to help. Walt
asked for a casualty report and for the
weather at his location. He responded
that several of the casualties were badly
wounded and said the fog was so thick,
he couldn’t see the tops of the trees
where he was standing.
A few minutes later, Paris told us we
were approaching Thu Dau Mot, but we
couldn’t see any lights below us. Walt
asked the fellow on the ground what
kind of signal device they planned to
use and was told they had built a huge
bonfire, hoping its heat would cause the
fog to lift over their immediate area.
Although our helicopter was minimally equipped for IFR flight, Walt and
I felt comfortable flying on instruments.
Neither of us wanted to declare failure
yet, so we began discussing a harebrained scheme. We knew the Saigon
(IFR, continued on page 10.)
PAGE 9
(IFR, continued from page 9.)
River ran generally north and south
and skirted along the western edge of
Thu Dau Mot. As the river passed the
southern boundary of the village, it
made a 90-degree turn to the east for
a short distance and then turned south
again toward Saigon.
We also knew their helipad was on
the north bank of the river just after
it made its turn to the east, and we
knew Paris Control had a good fix on
its location using the system we had
devised earlier. With that in mind, we
asked the controller to vector us to a
spot about 15 miles to the north and
about a quarter mile to the west of Thu
Dau Mot, hoping that would put us on
a track over the river.
Once there, we intended to begin
letting down, hoping we could eventually see lights from the village or reflections off the river. If we could find the
river, we planned to follow it to where it
turned to the east and figured we could
see the helipad lights from there.
When I explained our plan to the
controller, he was very skeptical about
helping us. He said his radar wasn’t
accurate at that distance and was
concerned about losing us in “ground
clutter” or interference as we got closer
to the ground. I told him we could let
down to 1,000 feet and still be clear of
all obstacles in the area, so he finally
agreed to work with us.
We began our descent into the fog
layer below us while the controller provided headings to keep us over where
he thought the river might be. At the
same time, Walt and I had to decide
how low we could safely go. We knew
the elevation of the helipad, so we
added 300 feet to allow for small hills
and large jungle trees in the area and
surmised we could let down to 500 feet
without crashing into anything.
As we started down, the crew chief
and medic slid their doors back and
began looking for lights or reflections
off the river. When we reached 1,000
feet, we were still socked in. I asked
Walt if he was willing to go down to
600 feet, and he agreed. When we got
there, we still couldn’t see anything, so
we decided to go a little lower. As we
neared 500 feet, the medic spoke up,
“Sir, I think I saw water directly below
us, but then I lost it.”
PAGE 10
We were still in the clouds, so I suggested we ease down another 50 feet
and if we didn’t break out, we ought to
call it quits and go home. Walt agreed,
so I began another slow descent. We
had let down a few more feet when our
crew chief shouted, “Sir, there’s a fire
to our left rear!” I looked back through
the open cargo door and saw a huge fire
at what seemed to be the same altitude
as us. I made a quick turn to keep from
losing sight of it and switched on the
landing light and searchlight while
turning.
We were immediately immersed in clouds again,
but this time it felt good,
because we knew the
“bad guys” were manning
a heavy-caliber machine
gun less than a quartermile away.
Just as I got our nose lined up on
the fire, the searchlight became fully
extended and lit up the area in front of
us. To our surprise, we found ourselves
looking into the top of an enormous
jungle tree, so I jerked up the pitch lever
to climb over it. Unfortunately, I was
too late, so we brushed through the top
of the tree and came to a hover over a
huge bonfire that must have been 150
feet straight below us.
The fellow on the ground began
yelling over his radio, “DUSTOFF,
you’re right over me! I see you! You’re
right over me! Come straight down
and you’ll be okay, but watch out for
the radio antenna to your right!” With
the crew chief and medic hanging out
of their doors to clear us, we hovered
straight down and finally reached the
ground.
As our eyes grew accustomed to
the dim lights all around us, Walt and
I became totally confused. We weren’t
on the helipad where we had been
expecting to land! Instead, we were
on the ground inside the Fifth Infantry
Division’s headquarters compound
with buildings, large radio antennae,
military vehicles, and trees all around
us.
The former military pilot who
had been on the radio ran to my side
of the helicopter and jerked the door
open while excitedly telling me he
hadn’t seen us until we were directly
over him. I hope it didn’t show, but I
was really hacked off at him because
he hadn’t told us he was bringing us
into the headquarters compound. As
a result, we had left the relative safety
of the low ground by the river and had
unknowingly flown over the highest
terrain in the area.
When I finally got a chance to talk,
I asked why he hadn’t used the helipad.
He looked away for a moment before
telling me it had been captured shortly
before we arrived, and the Viet Cong
had a .51-caliber machine gun sitting
off to one side waiting for us. He said
he didn’t tell us he was bringing us into
the headquarters compound because
he was afraid we might not attempt a
landing there.
Walt and I began surveying the tall
trees and other obstacles surrounding
us and were concerned whether we had
enough power to take all the casualties.
We knew the weather wouldn’t allow
us to make another trip, so we decided
to load them all.
I asked Walt to monitor the gauges
and then pulled in all the power I could.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure we would
make it because the EGT was pegged
at the red line, when we finally cleared
the tops of the trees and leveled off to
gain airspeed. We were immediately
immersed in clouds again, but this time
it felt good, because we knew the “bad
guys” were manning a heavy-caliber
machine gun less than a quarter-mile
away.
As we neared Saigon, I asked
Paris for permission to cross Tan Son
Nhut at mid-field, so we could follow
the main street to downtown Saigon,
where the U.S. Navy Hospital was
located. There was no other traffic, so
Paris Control switched us over to the
tower frequency, and our request was
approved.
At about 500 feet, we began breaking out of the clouds and saw the dim
lights of Saigon in front of us. As we
reached the edge of the city, we noticed
tanks and trucks at all the major inter(IFR, continued on page 11.)
The DUSTOFFer
Don’t Transform—Just Restore—What Makes Us Great, Unique
O
An article penned by MG Patrick Brady, U.S. Army (Ret.), Medal of Honor recipient, in the Salt Lake Tribune
n the Fourth of July, our nation celebrated a date unlike
any other in the history of
our planet. On the First of July, the
Army Medical Department celebrated
a date remarkable in the history of our
military.
The Declaration of Independence
focused on the divine rights, dignity
and potential of humans, and unleashed
a bounty manifest in much of the
freedom and prosperity on this planet.
Amazingly, some want to transform
this marvelous document.
The first of July marked the anniversary of the death of Charles Kelly, a
Soldier who died to save and perpetuate
Army aeromedical evacuation, called
DUSTOFF, the greatest lifesaver in the
history of combat. Amazingly, some
want to transform DUSTOFF.
Charles Kelly lied to get into WWII
at age 15. He was a bit of a rascal and
got court-martialed three times during
that war. He was almost killed in combat, where he served both as a medic
and an infantryman.
He could not get the Army out of his
blood, and after time as a high school
principal, he became an Army Aviator,
trained at Fort Sam Houston, and went
to Vietnam, where we met. He was the
commander of the only air ambulance
unit in Vietnam when DUSTOFF operations were little understood.
Kelly’s boss decided that DUSTOFF should be a part-time mission for
the air ambulances. The aircraft would
(IFR, continued from page 10.)
Navy Hospital. We asked the drivers
if they would take the Vietnamese
casualties too, and they agreed. After
a short flight back to Tan Son Nhut,
we inspected our aircraft to see what
kind of damage had been done by our
contact with the tree. The only visible
signs were a few paint scratches behind
the right chin bubble and a small limb
hanging from the right skid.
The following summer I returned
to Fort Sam Houston for the Officer’s
Career Course. One evening, my wife
and I had to attend a Commandant’s
Reception. We were standing in a long
line waiting to greet the Commandant
when I noticed several people sitting
at a table against the far wall of the
Officer’s Club. I wasn’t certain, but
they seemed to be looking our way and
didn’t appear to be part of the official
reception.
sections. Troops seemed to be moving
everywhere, so I asked the tower operator what was going on. He calmly replied, “Oh, there’s another coup going
on. It started a few minutes ago.”
We descended to less than 200
feet, but still had to dodge around
large patches of fog to maintain visual
contact with the streets below. It soon
dawned on us that if we continued
following the main street into Saigon,
we would pass right in front of the
Presidential Palace and might get our
butts shot off, especially while a coup
attempt was underway. Walt gave me a
quick heading change to the west, and
we approached from the Cholon side.
Two U.S. Navy ambulances were
waiting when we landed at the Vietnamese National Police soccer field,
which doubled as a helipad for the
Fall/Winter 2010
. . . Kelly was outraged.
He openly denounced his
leadership and set about
to prove that no one could
do the medical mission
better than medics.
be used for ash and trash until there was
a patient, then a portable Red Cross
would be slapped on the bird to fly the
medical mission.
This was, of course, insane, and
Kelly was outraged. He openly denounced his leadership and set about to
prove that no one could do the medical
mission better than medics.
Patient survival drove everything.
He flew at night, in weather, and landed
on battlefields, often during the battle.
He became known as Mad Man Kelly,
and his exploits were legendary.
On July 1, 1964, Kelly came under heavy fire as he landed to rescue
wounded Soldiers. The ground forces
screamed at him to get out. Kelly responded, “When I have your wounded.”
He then took a round through his heart
and died on the spot.
Kelly was the 149th American to
die in Vietnam, but no other death
caused such an outcry. GEN William
Westmoreland called him a living
legend. The general, who coveted
his aircraft, broke down and wept at
his funeral. We never heard another
word about portable Red Crosses, and
DUSTOFF remained under medical
control until recently.
“When I have your wounded”—
what a great way to die, and for the
DUSTOFF crews after Kelly, the only
way to fly.
Inspired by Kelly’s dying words,
DUSTOFF went on to set survival
records unmatched in combat history.
If you were wounded in the jungle in
Vietnam, your chances of survival were
(Don’t, continued on page 12.)
A few moments later, one of the
couples got up and began making their
way through the crowd toward us. Neither of them looked familiar, so I was
surprised when the man asked, “Are
you Doug Moore?” When I said yes, he
turned to his wife and said, “Honey, this
is the guy that saved my life!”
Pete Bishop had been an advisor
with the Fifth Vietnamese Infantry Division and was seriously wounded during the attack on Thu Dau Mot. He said
he remembered lying on the ground that
night, praying that we would get in to
pick him up, but didn’t believe anyone
could land in that kind of weather.
I think Pete would agree with Walt
and me that someone was looking over
our shoulders that night. It must be true
that God looks after dogs, children, and
wayward aviators.
—DUSTOFFer—
PAGE 11
Casualty Evacuation Helicopters: Reevaluating the Role
of the DUSTOFF in the Vietnam War
W
Historical article written by Paddy Griffith and published in the Vietnam magazine in June 2000
ithin the general evolution of the art of war,
the conflict in Vietnam
was notable for several
novel and important features that were
destined to become irreversible. Among
these were such things as the helicopter
gunship, the electronic battlefield, and
even the hush-hush array of satellitebased surveillance assets.
All are powerful tactical factors
that we today seem to take pretty much
for granted, to the extent that from our
present perspective, a generation later,
we may overlook the significance of
their original development. We tend
to forget that a large number of the
key elements of modern warfare were
totally new in 1965, and that it was the
Vietnam War that first allowed them
to be explored and deployed under the
stresses of real and mortal combat.
From the viewpoint of troops on the
ground in Vietnam, the innovation that
made by far the greatest impact was
not directly tactical at all, but actually
medical in nature. This was the casualty
evacuation helicopter, or “DUSTOFF,”
which could whisk a wounded man
to a well-equipped aid station within
minutes, and from there to a base hospital within a few hours. One Vietnam
(Don’t, continued from page 11.)
better than if you were in an accident
on a U.S. highway.
About one million souls were
rescued in Vietnam—men, women,
children, enemy as well as friendly,
often under impossible conditions.
None of that would have been possible
had Kelly lost his battle over medical
control of medical aircraft.
Today, few remember Kelly and are
intent on transforming medical evacuation to nonmedical control.
Transformation is not the answer;
restoration is. We need to restore the
values of the Declaration and restore
DUSTOFF to the excellence Kelly
established. 
PAGE 12
infantry veteran told me, “The troops
in my own unit always felt that if we
were not killed outright if we were hit,
the odds of surviving were in our favor.
This added greatly to the confidence
factor in any situation.”
In historical terms, it represented
still another advance in the speed of
More convalescents in the
hospital, surviving longer,
meant more doctors and
nurses were needed to
look after them, after
which more veterans’ pensions had to be found.
casualty evacuation and in the treatment of shock, which had significantly
improved since the Napoleonic Wars.
Until then, unless one was a highranking officer, wounded Soldiers were
not removed from the field until after
the battle was over.
In 1792, however, French surgeon
Dominique Jean Larrey began to
develop horse-drawn, two-wheeled
“flying ambulances” for the swift
removal of casualties—primarily to
prevent their being slaughtered by the
enemy—and he soon discovered that
the earlier they were treated, the better
were their chances of recovery. Even
after that fundamentally critical innovation, some 44 percent of the Soldiers
wounded during the American Civil
War failed to survive. By 1918 the British died-of-wounds figure was down
to around 8 percent. In World War II it
was 4.5 percent for U.S. troops, and in
Vietnam it was as low as 2.6 percent.
Each successive improvement in
MEDEVAC procedures brought a definite tactical advantage in terms of troop
morale, and in Vietnam the process
was brought to practically the highest
level it could possibly attain. There was
also a political advantage for the U.S.
government to take unprecedented care
of its conscripted Soldiers and lavish
upon them a degree of medical succor
that had been unknown in any previous
war. Fewer losses meant more support
back home.
The DUSTOFF, however, did not
come cheap. First, it involved a heavy
cost in rear-echelon personnel, as well
as some long-term cash payouts. More
convalescents in the hospital, surviving longer, meant that more doctors
and nurses were needed to look after
them, after which more veterans’ pensions had to be found. It is a sad fact
that the average wounded Soldier costs
the taxpayer many more dollars than
a Soldier killed in action, however
differently we may rate the psychic or
moral costs. Second, the helicopters
themselves represented a particularly
significant drain on a precious tactical
resource.
We must recall that 1965 came only
11 years after the entire French empire
had been able to deploy a grand total
of only seven helicopters in the Southeast Asia theater. The United States
would eventually deploy something
like 4,000. But even then the average
time available for flying might be only
about 10 percent, since as much as 90
percent of any chopper’s time had to be
devoted to maintenance tasks. Hence,
on average, only something like 400
helicopters were reliably available at
any moment to cover all the requirements of the U.S. forces in-country, as
well as of the ARVN, and of the many
political and civilian agencies.
If we break this down still further,
it is not difficult to understand that
only some 70 to 80 helicopters might
be available for military use within
each corps area. This might translate
into only one or two dozen per division. Lifting a single infantry company
might normally require some 16 to 20
helicopters, depending on fuel load.
Those choppers were supplemented
by the necessary accompaniment of
gunships, command ships, and associated heavy-lift support—or indeed the
(Casualty, continued on page 13.)
The DUSTOFFer
(Casualty, continued from page 12.)
continuing routine requirement for logistic backup throughout the Army. So
by definition, there can rarely have been
very many surplus helicopters available
for MEDEVAC purposes.
As LTG Harold G. Moore (then the
lieutenant colonel commanding the
lead battalion) later reported on the
start of the November 1965 Ia Drang
battle, “My main concern focused
on the fact that we would have only
16 Huey slicks to ferry the battalion
into the assault area. That meant that
fewer than 80 men—not even one full
company—would hit the landing zone
in the first wave (in the face of three
whole enemy battalions).”
Then again, in December 1969, LT
Michael Lee Lanning experienced a
nerve-wracking wait when only three
helicopters could be made available to
lift his company out of the scene of a
bloody battle. “We would have to be
extracted in three separate lifts,” he
recalled. “Turnaround time between
each sortie would be about 30 minutes.
That meant that before the last group
could be picked up, any lingering dinks
would have an hour to plan an attack
on the remaining 18 men.” All in all,
we must conclude that despite the apparently plentiful supply of helicopters
available to the U.S. forces in Vietnam,
they were still always a relatively rare
resource that needed to be managed and
husbanded very carefully.
The DUSTOFF suffered from
a particular difficulty that has been
common to all front-line ambulances
throughout history. It was designed
to rescue wounded Soldiers from as
near as possible to the time and place
they were wounded, which by definition would add up to an especially
dangerous situation. The DUSTOFF
had to fly right into the heart of the
battle zone and pluck out shocked,
suffering, bleeding, and badly damaged
combatants, who might still be under
heavy fire. Yet the medical crew also
had to make sure that they themselves
managed to survive such fire, so their
rescued casualty could be removed
safely to an aid station in the rear.
That made for some urgent personal
dilemmas. As one crewman recalled in
Moore and Joseph C. Galloway’s We
Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young,
Fall/Winter 2010
“The NVA were in the wood line shooting at the helicopter. The MEDEVAC
pilot kind of froze up on us and was
having trouble setting the ship down.
We never did come to a complete
hover. All aboard had to dive out on the
ground from about six feet up in the air.
We ran in a crouch.”
On some occasions the infantry
had particularly bad experiences with
DUSTOFF crews. William Shucart reported of the Ia Drang battle, “We were
trying to get the MEDEVAC ships to
The DUSTOFF pilots became renowned for their
courage in placing themselves and their ships in
harm’s way, but there
was always a fine line . . .
between an acceptable
risk and a suicidal one.
come in, but they would not. A couple
of Huey slicks came down, but we
were taking fire, and the MEDEVACs
wouldn’t come. When you are taking
fire is precisely when you need MEDEVAC. I don’t know where those guys
got their great reputations. I was totally
dismayed with the MEDEVAC guys.
The Huey slick crews were terrific.”
Obviously, there was always a
serious conflict of interest inherent in
the whole business of MEDEVAC. On
one side, the DUSTOFF crews had
to ignore the tactical dangers and go
in regardless. In fact many of them
were often among the bravest men to
be found anywhere in the military. On
the other hand, they had to calculate
their risks carefully and make sure
that conditions were relatively safe, or
at least safe enough. Otherwise, they
would be certain to lose the wounded
men they were evacuating, as well as
their own lives.
Lanning’s account of a conversation
between him and a pilot was perhaps
not atypical:
I held [the wounded and delirious [SSG] Blyman with one arm
and reached for the handset to talk to
the MEDEVAC pilot with the other.
“Listen,” I said, “I need a hook and a
cable.”
“What’s the situation?” he asked.
I told him we were receiving sporadic fire, knowing ahead of time what
his reaction would be.
“No way,” he answered. “I can’t
hover that long under fire.”
“Listen,” I said again, “we’ve got a
man hit in the knee. He’s gone crazy.
I’ve got to get him out of here now!
We’ll put down all the supporting fire
we can.”
The pilot must have heard the
urgency in my voice, because after a
slight pause he said, “Okay. Pop smoke.
Let’s give it a try.”
In that instance, the DUSTOFF
chopper did receive some hits. But
the extraction was successful, and the
members of the MEDEVAC team were
recommended for medals.
It was essential for MEDEVAC
helicopters to drop their extraction
hooks at safe sites, or more normally
they would need to find a viable and
secure LZ, which was often even more
difficult in overgrown jungle terrain,
in marginal weather, or close to the
enemy. The quickest way to lose a
helicopter was to land it under heavy
close-range fire. So it was understood,
as Philip Caputo memorably remarked,
“Happiness is a cold landing zone.” The
DUSTOFF pilots became renowned for
their courage in placing themselves and
their ships in harm’s way, but there was
always a fine line to be drawn between
an acceptable risk and a suicidal one.
Quite apart from enemy action,
even the basic physical and administrative preconditions for a MEDEVAC
mission were often daunting. Such
problems persisted from the start to the
finish of the war. In War Zone D during July 1965, General John J. Tolson
recalled that 173rd Airborne Brigade
members “found they had to go to unusual lengths to clear new landing zones
for medical evacuation.” One company
of the 1st Battalion (Airborne), 503rd
Infantry, tried to clear an LZ with 100
pounds of C-4 explosives, but the GIs
could make little impression on the
trees. In July 1969, the 1st Battalion,
3rd Infantry, accidentally dropped
a massive mahogany tree across its
LZ, and the men needed a whole day
(Casualty, continued on page 14 .)
PAGE 13
(Casualty, continued from page 13.)
to clear it away. Then again in Laos,
in March 1972, according to Tolson,
“even single-ship resupply and medical
evacuation missions had to be planned
and conducted as a complete combat
operation. This entailed a separate fire
plan, allocation of escorting armed
helicopters, and contingency plans for
securing downed crews and aircraft.”
Such operations were by no means easy
or instant, as might casually be assumed
by the armchair strategist.
The sheer complexity of organizing
many of the DUSTOFF missions leads
us on to the final price that had to be
paid for them, which was surely by far
the most serious and costly of all. In a
nutshell, MEDEVAC often distorted
the tactical shape of battles, because it
was normally given priority over every
other type of mission. As F.J. West put
it in Small Unit Action in Vietnam, care
for the wounded, and even retrieving the bodies of the dead, became a
mission “more sacred than life itself.”
Strict attention to these considerations
became elevated into a vital point of
honor, as well as a precondition for high
morale, both among Soldiers in the field
and (albeit less directly) among the
civilian population back home.
Both the in-country comradesin-arms and the Stateside relatives
of conscripted teenagers had to be
reassured that the United States would
do everything possible to rescue its
Soldiers if they should be injured or
in danger of falling into enemy hands.
And the men also needed reassurance
that if the very worst befell them,
their bodies would not simply be left
to rot in a suppurating alien jungle.
This approach was excellent in itself
and in many ways supremely humane.
However, the requirements of MEDEVAC frequently changed the planned
evolution of battles, or even led to new
engagements that had not been planned
at all. It became a force that worked
strongly against the freedom of tacticians to organize tactics.
The need to search for a viable LZ
for helicopter MEDEVAC often distracted the unit fighting on the ground
(which had by definition just suffered
one or more injuries) from pursuing
its battle against the enemy in front.
There are numerous examples of this in
PAGE 14
eyewitness narratives. In essence, often
an infantry company would advance,
come under fire, lose a few men, and
then start looking for and securing a
suitable LZ somewhere close to—or
embarrassingly often, rather far from—
its immediate rear.
Unless the unit was relatively lucky,
this effort might involve at least a
whole platoon, which would normally
constitute the company commander’s
all-important tactical reserve. As soon
as that platoon became unable to par-
However, the requirements
of MEDEVAC frequently
changed the planned evolution of battles, or even
led to new engagements
that had not been planned
at all.
ticipate in the main battle, all further
offensive movement beyond the front
line would naturally become unthinkable, and the general battle plan would
instantly dissolve.
Arranging this MEDEVAC effort
would also take up a great deal of the
company commander’s attention when
he should have been converting the firefight into an assault and exploitation.
The overall result was that the whole
company would freeze and abandon its
forward movement.
The alternative would have been
for the whole American company to
press forward without detaching any
significant part of its combat strength
or diverting command energy into
MEDEVAC-related tasks, so it could
finish mopping up the enemy before starting to worry about its own
wounded. If this system had been generally adopted, it would certainly have
increased the number of U.S. Soldiers
who later died of their wounds. Moreover, it would arguably not have secured any more decisive strategic result
against the notoriously elusive VC and
NVA. However, it was the “traditional
military thing” to do in any firefight,
and it would surely have increased the
extent and scale of many tactical victories, at least at the local level.
That might have added up to either
a good or a bad thing in itself. But the
new doctrine that was actually put into
effect (i.e., dropping everything to care
for the wounded) did clearly indicate
that a major, if not a seismic, change
had suddenly taken place in the whole
art of war.
Since 1973, minimizing American
casualties has become an increasingly
prominent feature of all U.S. deployments overseas. Quite apart from the
traumas of Tet, Hamburger Hill, and the
Mayaguez incident, the need for economy in lives lost in limited wars was
underlined in the public consciousness
by some sharply unpalatable losses in
both Beirut and Grenada in 1983, and
even in the otherwise triumphant Gulf
War of 1991.
In 1994, the entire American peacekeeping operation in Somalia was
called off after 18 U.S. Soldiers had
been killed in a single botched assault
against one of the country’s warlords,
Mohammed Farah Aidid. In more
recent times, the often very violent
U.S. interventions in such places as the
Balkans, the Sudan, and Afghanistan
have always been predicated upon a
demand for, and an expectation of,
absolutely minimal U.S. casualties.
This has normally meant the use of air
power or cruise missiles, rather than
troops on the ground. Or if ground
troops have been deployed, they have
come to be very carefully protected
and husbanded. Today we even seem
to have reached a situation in which
the DUSTOFF itself has become almost
obsolete, for the simple reason that
there seem to be so few U.S. casualties
to MEDEVAC.
Against this scenario we should remember, although care for the wounded
in Vietnam might often have caused
a battle to be prematurely curtailed,
there were also many occasions in
which rescue missions for the missing
or dead actually produced an escalation of the fighting. Perhaps the most
spectacular example was the saga of
Bat 21, a Douglas EB-66 aircraft that
was shot down in 1972 in a part of the
DMZ that happened to be occupied by
an entire NVA division. A major 12-day
battle was fought to rescue the one crew
member known to have survived, and
additional aircraft and helicopters were
(Casualty, continued on page 16.)
The DUSTOFFer
New Entries on the
Flight Manifest
Lloyd Akers
Kacie Anderson
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Richard Boeshaar
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Otto Brauer
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Michael Chase
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Timothy Culver
Stephan Drew
Scott Farley
Pedro Fernandez
Wilfredo Figueroa Jr.
Alec Finlay
Samuel Fricks
Matthew Giersdorf
Raymond Hanson
Jonathan Hodge
Juris Jauntirans
Joe Jurkowitz
Mindy King
William King
Peter Kuhlmann
Steven Mandel
Bruce Molitor
Travis Owen
Jason Pennington
Bjoern Piertzyk
Thomas Ratcliff
Juan Reyes
Josemariglenford Rivera
Jennifer Smith
Daniel Spratt
Eddie Williams
Jason Wilson
Nominate Your Hero
for the
DUSTOFF Hall of Fame
We want your stories!
Share them in the DUSTOFFer
The DUSTOFFer would like to publish
your article. If you have a recollection of a
particular DUSTOFF or MAST mission, please
share it with our members. If your unit has
been involved in an outstanding rescue mission
or worthwhile program, please submit your
essay about it to The DUSTOFFer. Don’t
worry about not being the best writer. We
will edit your material professionally. Send
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Send typed, double-spaced hard copy to the
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Please send your submissions to:
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DUSTOFFers, don’t let our legacy go untold.
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Fame tab at the left of the opening page for
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it complete.
Fall/Winter 2010
PAGE 15
(Casualty, continued from page 14.)
lost in the process.
More prosaic, but perhaps rather
more typical, was the five-day fight
for the body of LT Bill Little in November 1969. It started as a platoon
action but grew until it involved two
companies of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd
Infantry, 10 armored vehicles, and
a large weight of air- and artillerydelivered ordnance. LT Little had
been killed while he was trying to
MEDEVAC the pointman of his
recon platoon, but the rest of the platoon had then been unable to retrieve
the body and had called in Charlie
Company to help.
The attackers encountered a
strong bunker complex and were
repulsed, necessitating DUSTOFF
evacuation of their own wounded. At
this point, an insulting enemy voice
broke into the battalion radio net to
taunt the would-be rescuers, saying,
“We have your lieutenant. Come and
get him.”
The NVA were thus using Bill
Little’s body as bait, and the U.S.
response was eagerness to retrieve
it, exactly as proffered. Without that
taunt, there might not have been
quite so strong a desire to assault the
strongly fortified NVA area. But the
action duly escalated, and a sustained
air and artillery bombardment was
laid upon the bunkers.
After several delays, a combined
attack finally was launched by both
Bravo and Charlie companies, supported by what was (for Vietnam) an
impressive array of armor. The whole
area was then promptly evacuated by
the NVA, who suffered fairly heavy
losses for no further U.S. casualties.
The body of LT Little was successfully recovered from its shallow grave,
where it had been buried with all the
respect due to a brave opponent. This
action was certainly a tactical victory
for the U.S. side, but it is important
to remember that its inner structure
had in many ways been shaped and
determined not by deliberate tactical
planning, but by the overriding urge
to recover a single dead body.
Why should the status
of one body (or in other
cases, of one wounded man) be allowed to
change the whole course
of a battle?
According to the tenets of classical strategy, this sort of thing would
seem to be complete nonsense. Why
on earth should it matter whether
a fallen American lieutenant was
buried with honor in Vietnam by his
enemies or in the cemetery at West
Point by his family and friends? Why
should the status of one body (or in
other cases, of one wounded man) be
allowed to change the whole course
of a battle?
In the 19th century, when life was
cheap and few fallen warriors were
even given marked graves, that sort
of question would have been verging on the incomprehensible, if not
the inconceivable. Even in World
War II, where total U.S. losses were
more than five times those suffered in
Vietnam in about half the time span,
it was still very much the exception,
2010 DUSTOFF Hall of Fame
Voting Is Completed
Please join us in honoring two more DUSTOFFers on their
selection for induction into the DUSTOFF Hall of Fame.
rather than the rule, for any special
effort to be made to “save Private
Ryan.” We have to stop and wonder
just why these matters should be
viewed so differently today.
Perhaps the answer lies in the
perceived importance of the cause
being fought for. In Vietnam, most
GIs tried to execute their mission as
well and as efficiently as possible. Yet
many still felt a deep contempt for the
Vietnamese whom they were trying
to defend, reinforced by a belief that
American civilians neither understood nor supported the war.
Without any loss of military professionalism, they found it difficult
to work up any fierce commitment
to the preservation of the Republic
of Vietnam. At the same time, it was
correspondingly easy to feel totally
devoted to the lives and welfare of
one’s own comrades-in-arms. It
therefore became natural to feel,
as Lanning put it, that “the people
(animals) of Vietnam are not worth
one drop of American blood,” or that
even a spectacular tactical victory, in
which dozens of enemy troops were
killed, was “not worth nine lives.”
There was thus apparently a
type of unspoken multiplier at work
whereby it was subconsciously
thought to be acceptable to lose one
American life for every 10 or 20 of
the enemy’s, but any greater sacrifice
than that was perceived as something
of a defeat.
This line of reasoning was, of
course, encouraged by the Pentagon’s
strategy, based on attrition and the
body count, in which it was just as
important to minimize American
deaths as it was to maximize the
enemy’s. Those two goals, however,
often turned out to be incompatible,
because rescuing one’s own wounded
often meant that the battle against
the enemy had to be broken off at
a critical time, or diverted into an
unplanned direction. 
COL (R) Hank Tuell and COL (R) Charles L. Webb will be
inducted on February 12, 2011, at the 32nd Annual DUSTOFF Reunion. Thank you, Hank and Charlie, for your selfless and inspirational service during your careers.
PAGE 16
The DUSTOFFer
2010—The Year of the Flight Medic?
M
Submitted by CSM David Litteral, Commandant of the NCO Academy at the Army’s Center and School.
aster Sergeant Cirigliano, a
former Flight Medic, came
up to me recently at Fort
Sam Houston. He said, “Good job on
the Sergeant Major Selection Board!
Looks like 2010 was the year of the
Flight Medic.”
It was no secret that I sat the SGM/
CSM Selection Board last spring. MSG
C. was commenting on the group of
68W with DUSTOFF experience who
were selected to attend the United
States Army Sergeant Major Academy
next summer. Upon graduation, they
will be promoted to Sergeant Major.
Prior to his comment, I hadn’t considered how many DUSTOFF First
Sergeants we had selected. Our job
was simply to vote the records. The
personnel folks came in after all records
were voted and revealed the number
selected.
Was there an advantage that two
of the three CSM board members had
crew member wings? How about the
fact that the Panel Chief was a Medical
Service Corps Aviator? In a word, no.
Far from it. The board members were
selected by the Department of the Army
Secretariat for Senior Enlisted Promotions. On day-one of the process, all
board members took an oath to select
the best qualified master sergeants/first
sergeants from panel standards that we,
the board, created. The panel standards
were then briefed to the secretariat and
further briefed to the president of the
board, a major general, who approved
those standards. The board then proceeded to score over 425 records from
all walks of the AMEDD. One of the
other parts of the aforementioned board
oath is that we are not permitted to
discuss specific panel standards—so
don’t ask.
On day-one of the process, all board members
took an oath to select
the best qualified master
sergeants/first sergeants
from panel standards that
we, the board, created.
This much I can tell you: Overall,
the same three areas that have always
been important were still relevant to
the 2010 AMEDD Panel. They were:
Institutional Learning, Self-Development, and a variety of Operational
Assignments (done well). My former
commander and Battle Buddy at
Blanchfield Army Community Hospital, (then-COL) Keith Gallagher, once
said, “Education is the great equalizer.”
His dad was an MP First Sergeant, and
despite humble beginnings, he sought
his education, worked hard and is now a
Brigadier General, commanding Pacific
Regional Medical Command. (It stands
to reason that having a former Flight
Medic as his Command Sergeant Major
may have had something to do with him
getting promoted to BG!)
In all seriousness, if there is anything I would recommend to the staff
sergeants and sergeants first class coming up through the ranks, it would be
to look at the three areas I mentioned
above and work on all of those areas.
Find a capable mentor and listen to his/
her advice. Self development is not the
opposite of selfless service. Demonstrate a sincere desire to serve the Army
at higher levels of responsibility and
don’t forget the guys and gals beneath
you. As a young Specialist-Five my
Commander, LTC Ben Knisely, used
to tell us, “As you climb the ladder,
turn around and help the soldier on the
rung below you.” I watched him live
that model.
Sorry, MSG Cirigliano, it wasn’t
the Year of the Flight Medic. It was
simply a year where the heavy lifting
by DUSTOFF First Sergeants, as well
as others, was evident in many of the
records we reviewed. Make no mistake—it was a competitive year. The
quality of the senior NCOs of all 68
Career Management Fields was very
high and will continue to get better
each year.
—DUSTOFFer —
Buddy and Edna’s Helicopter Ride
Buddy and his wife, Edna, went to the State Fair in Arkansas every year, and every year Buddy would say, “Edna,
I’d sure like to ride in that helicopter.”
Edna always replied, “I know, Buddy, but that helicopter ride is fifty bucks, and fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”
One year, buddy and Edna went to the fair and Buddy said, “Edna, I’m 85 years old. If I don’t ride that helicopter
now, I might never get a another chance.”
To this, Edna replied, “Buddy, that helicopter ride is fifty bucks, and fifty bucks is fifty bucks.”
The pilot overheard the couple and said, “Folks, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take both of you for a ride. If you can stay
quiet for the entire ride and don’t say a word, I won’t charge you a penny! But, if you say one word, it’s fifty dollars.”
Buddy and Edna agreed and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of fancy maneuvers, but not a word was heard. He
did his daredevil tricks over and over again, but still not a word.
When they landed, the pilot turned to Buddy and said, “By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but
you didn’t. I’m impressed!”
Buddy replied, “Well, to tell you the truth, I almost said something when Edna fell out, but you know . . .
FIFTY BUCKS IS FIFTY BUCKS!”
Fall/Winter 2010
PAGE 17
The Front Lines of Saving Lives
A
By David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, October 17, 2010
t Forward Operating Base
Wilson the first sign this isn’t a
routine pickup is the rhythmic
right and left banking of the helicopter.
It’s the kind of thing kids do on
bikes to feel the thrill of heeling over.
Only this is done to make the aircraft
a less easy target.
At 6:09 p.m., Dustoff 57 has just
left this base deep in Taliban-infiltrated
Kandahar province, headed for a POI,
or point of injury. On board are two
pilots, a crew chief, and a flight medic,
as well as two litters for carrying the
wounded, and numerous black nylon
bags stuffed with ultramodern medical
gear and some of the oldest lifesaving
tricks of the battlefield. That combination of new and old—of specially
developed porcelain-powder gauze
and old-fashioned tourniquets—is key
to keeping gravely wounded Soldiers
alive in the minutes before they get
to the hospital. It’s also the basis of
evolving front-line strategies that may
eventually trickle down in modified
form to civilian ambulances, emergency rooms, and trauma centers in the
United States.
Somewhere ahead of the aircraft is
a Soldier who minutes earlier stepped
on an improvised explosive device,
the signature weapon of the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. All the helicopter crew knows is that he’s “category
A”—critical.
The sun is down, but there is still a
little pink in the western sky. Beneath
the helicopter, the ground is made of
what the troops call “moon dust.” Finegrained and dry, it is a color not as dark
as dirt and not as light as sand.
The aircraft weaves over compounds enclosed by mud walls and
surrounded by fields of grapes and
vegetables. Farther away on the sere,
unirrigated plain are the domed tents of
herdsmen, their cooking fires glowing
like terrestrial stars.
The trip out takes nine minutes.
The helicopter lands, stirring up a
cloud of moon dust that nearly obscures
six Soldiers kneeling and standing
around the wounded man, 50 feet from
PAGE 18
the aircraft. Their head lamps make
tiny blue searchlights. The 28-year-old
flight medic, SGT Cole Reece, runs
toward them.
CPL Deanna Helfrich, 22, the crew
chief, climbs out of her window and
walks around the nose of the aircraft,
trailing a communication cable that allows her to talk to the rest of the crew.
Speed, simplicity, and
priority have always been
the hallmarks of emergency medicine. The new
battlefield care . . . takes
those attributes to the
extreme.
She stands near the open door where
the wounded Soldier will be brought,
holding her rifle.
The weapon is a reminder: the crew
is here to save lives, but Rule 1 of the
Basic Management Plan for Care Under
Fire is “Return fire and take cover.”
There is no enemy fire this evening,
but there is so much dust in the air and
the rotors are spinning so fast that the
leading edges of the blades light up like
sparklers, flint on steel.
Fifteen minutes have now passed
since the Soldier was wounded. The
details of how it happened don’t matter
to Reece. There are a limited number of
things he can do between this nameless
spot and the hospital at Kandahar Airfield, where they will soon be headed.
What he needs to know he will see and
feel for himself.
Speed, simplicity, and priority have
always been the hallmarks of emergency medicine. The new battlefield
care that flight medics like Reece and
others on the ground practice takes
those attributes to the extreme.
Gone from their repertoire are difficult or time-consuming maneuvers,
such as routinely hanging bags of intravenous fluids. On the ground, medics
no longer carry stethoscopes or blood
pressure cuffs. They are trained instead
to evaluate a patient’s status by observation and pulse, to tolerate abnormal
vital signs such as low blood pressure,
to let the patient position himself if he’s
having trouble breathing—and above
all to have a heightened awareness that
too much medicine can endanger the
mission and still not save the patient.
Four people run to the helicopter
with the stretcher holding the wounded
Soldier. He lies on his back partially
wrapped in a foil blanket. His chest
is bare. In the middle of it is an intraosseous device, a large-bore needle
that has been punched into his breastbone by the medic on the ground. It’s
used to infuse fluids and drugs directly
into the circulatory system when a vein
can’t be found. It’s a no-nonsense technology, used occasionally in World War
II, that fell out of favor when cheap and
durable plastic tubing made I.V. catheters ubiquitous in the postwar years.
Until they were revived for the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, intraosseous devices
were used almost exclusively in infants
whose veins were too small to find.
On each leg the Soldier has a tourniquet, ratcheted down and locked to
stop all bleeding below it. These ancient devices went out of military use
more than half a century ago because of
concern that they caused tissue damage.
But research in the past 15 years has
shown that they can be left on for two
hours without causing permanent harm
to limbs. Now every Soldier carries a
tourniquet and is instructed to put one
on any severely bleeding limb and not
think of taking it off.
Tourniquets have saved at least
1,000 lives, and possibly as many as
2,000, in the past eight years. This
Soldier is almost certainly one of them.
They’re a big part of why only about
10 percent of casualties in these wars
have died, compared with 16 percent
in Vietnam.
On the Soldier’s left leg, the tourniquet is above the knee. Both bones
below his knee are broken, and the limb
is bent unnaturally inward. The tourniquet on his right leg is lower, below the
knee; how badly his foot is injured is
hard to tell from the dressings. His left
(Front, continued on page 19.)
The DUSTOFFer
(Front, continued from page 18.)
hand is splinted and bandaged, too.
Whether he will need an amputation
is uncertain. The hospital where he’s
headed treated 16 patients in September
who needed at least one limb amputated. Half were U.S. Soldiers, and the
monthly number has been climbing
since March.
The man is covered in moon dust,
and pale beneath it, but conscious and
able to pay some attention to Reece.
He’s gotten 10 milligrams of morphine,
not a lot.
First thing, the medic hooks a plastic tube to an oxygen tank and leans
forward and puts a face mask on the
Soldier’s head. He tells him over the
din of the engine that he’ll be okay, that
they’ll be at the hospital in 10 minutes.
After three minutes on the ground, the
helicopter takes off.
Staunch the Bleeding
The interior of the helicopter is lit
by a single overhead light, head lamps
and the glow of instruments. Reece
tells Helfrich to check the tourniquets;
things sometimes move in transit. He
then pulls back the foil blanket and
inspects. A tangle of dry grass lies directly over the Soldier’s navel.
The medic sees that a laceration in
the Soldier’s left groin is still bleeding.
This, too, is a signature wound of the
two wars—a deep, dangerous injury
just outside the protective veil of body
armor and unable to be treated with a
tourniquet. It’s a wound from which a
person can easily bleed to death. Death
from blood loss has always been the
greatest hazard of war wounds.
A recent analysis found that of
Soldiers deemed to have “potentially
survivable” wounds, 80 percent died of
bleeding. Usually the wound site was
a part of the body where a tourniquet
couldn’t be applied.
The best option—not ideal—is to
stuff the gash with Combat Gauze, a
battlefield treatment new to the current wars. It’s a bandage impregnated
with a kind of powdered porcelain that
stimulates clotting. The medic on the
ground had already packed the wound
with it. Reece unwraps some more, lays
it across the injury and asks Helfrich to
apply direct pressure.
He undoes the Velcro sleeve of
Fall/Winter 2010
a blood-pressure cuff and puts it on
the Soldier’s right arm. He puts three
stick-on EKG leads on the man’s chest
and abdomen, a right triangle. The man
reaches up and touches his forehead,
a self-confirming gesture. When he’s
done, the medic gently takes the hand
and puts on the ring finger the toothless plastic jaws of a pulse oximeter,
a device that measures the oxygen
content of the blood through the skin.
The Soldier has lost a lot of blood. If his
It’s a wound from which a
person can easily bleed to
death. Death from blood
loss has always been the
greatest hazard of war
wounds.
breathing falters and he can’t oxygenate
what’s left, he will die.
The first blood pressure reading is
96/40. Normal is 120/80. The Soldier’s
heart rate is ’way over 100, but the exact number is irrelevant. Nobody who’s
just had something blow up in front of
him has a normal heart rate even if the
blast has done nothing to him.
Every minute or so, Reece puts his
right hand, which is in a black rubber
glove, onto the Soldier’s head and rubs
the center of his forehead. This is to
stimulate him and gauge his level of
consciousness. It may also reassure.
The pulse oximeter gives a reassuring reading. Several minutes into
the trip, the medic senses the Soldier
becoming drowsy and inserts a green
plastic tube into his left nostril. This
“nasopharyngeal airway” will make it
easier, if the man becomes unconscious,
for Reece to keep him alive.
While blood pressure somewhat
below normal is considered all right—
and even preferred—in severely injured
patients, a diminishing level of consciousness is not a good sign.
Reece reaches for a 500-milliliter
bag of Hextend, an intravenous fluid
containing starch molecules that help
boost blood pressure by preventing the
watery part of blood from leaking out
of vessels, as often happens in massive
trauma. He squeezes the bag to make it
run in more quickly through the device
in the Soldier’s breast bone.
The Soldier’s next blood pressure
reading is 116/71.
Just two minutes away, Reece leans
forward and tells the patient they’re
almost there.
Communication Glitch
Eleven minutes after lifting off
from the POI, the helicopter lands at
the so-called Role 3, or fully equipped,
hospital at Kandahar Airfield, about
30 miles to the east of the also wellfortified Forward Operating Base
Wilson. There, surgeons will take care
of the injuries before transferring the
patient, probably within two days, to
the huge military hospital in Landstuhl,
Germany, and then, after a week or so,
to the United States.
But something has happened in
the usually smooth communication
between dispatch center, aircraft, and
hospital. No ambulance pulls up to the
helicopter. Reece and Helfrich wait.
They wait.
The pilots radio the dispatcher that
they’ve arrived with a critically injured
Soldier. Reece and Helfrich, helmeted
and inaudible, gesture wildly to people
outside the emergency room door to
come over.
Two other patients have also recently arrived. But that’s not the problem.
There’s an available ambulance 100
yards away. But it doesn’t move.
Five minutes after touchdown, it
finally drives up, and the injured man
is rushed into the back. Reece says later
he was one minute from having the
crew carry the patient to the emergency
room themselves, even though running
that distance with a trauma patient on
a litter is just about the last thing you
want to do.
It’s been 28 minutes since the helicopter left Forward Operating Base
Wilson. The ambulance, with Reece
in it, disappears into a pool of greenish
light at the hospital entrance.
In 10 minutes, the medic returns,
and the helicopter takes off to begin
the refueling, restocking, and cleaning
that will make it ready, in less than an
hour, for the next call.
It’s for an Afghan man, described
as a Taliban fighter, who has stepped
on a land mine. 
PAGE 19
Top of the Schoolhouse
by 1SG Eugene Robinson
T
he Critical Task List from the
CTSB in April is still being
staffed for approval at AMEDD
C&S. If approved, there will be an additional two weeks of training during
the Flight Medic Course, which will
include High Angle and Water Rescue
training. The Joint En-Route Care
Course will be an additional phase of
the FMC. The JECC course will add
the post-operative patient packaging
and movement training to the FMC.
We have requested the Flight Medic
be included in the Surgeon General’s
Guidance to Pre-Deployment Training, which includes BCT3 and Army
Trauma Training Center.
ASI
The approval for the ASI is still
being staffed at the Army G1 level.
With approval, this will help with the
management of Flight Medics. Currently, only about 45-65% of the medics
in MEDEVAC units are Flight Medic
Course graduates. With the approval of
the 12-to-15 Ship increase and 15-to-24
Flight Medic increase, and the requirement for dwell time, this is becoming
even more difficult to fill. Units are
grabbing medics from within the BDE
and trying to train medics before they
leave. However, by doing this, they
have filled their slots, and the Flight
Medic graduates are not able to get in
the MEDEVAC unit.
Future Flight Medic
Briefs will be conducted this month
for the Council of Colonels at Fort Sam
Houston for Advancing Flight Medic
training. Course of Actions include
Paramedic and Critical Care EMT-P
training and the Current proposed
CTSB training. We have also been looking at the EMT-I 99, which includes a
much wider Scope of Practice.
Hails and Farewells
New arrivals to USASAM are SFC
Jones from Alaska and SFC Rohrs from
Fort Bragg. Departing is retired SFC
Landry and SFC Weidle, who will PCS
to Fort Bragg.
—DUSTOFFer—
Memories of Howard Huntsman
by DUSTOFFer Walt Harris
In Loving Honor of Howard Huntsman. Howard, as many of you know, became the new commander of the 57th MHA
Det. after Charlie Kelly was killed. Bloomquist kept us together until Howard arrived, and he probably had the most difficult shoes to follow and fill.
When he arrived, we all wondered who this Native American with the most magnificent hook nose was and what his
presence would mean to the 57th. He was to me at the beginning (and remained until my departure), a fun loving, relatively quiet man, except when there was a jug of scotch and some jalapenos and cheese to help keep the fires lit. He had
this most magnificent smile, and he actually taught me to love jalapenos and cheese. We often stopped by his room after
work to steal a few!
Just as we anticipated, along with Bloomquist’s advance warning, pickup policies would change. I believe Howard had
his marching orders before he left for the 57th, but whenever there was a need, no problem, those orders were stretched.
I remember some of the fun times when Hank Capozzi would fly up (on official business!) from Soc Trang, and Howard
was in his best and happiest form. What great times for all! They were the best of life-long friends; right Hank? My warm
condolences go out to you, Hank.
Howard received his first DFC while we were flying together and I was the Aircraft Commander. It was at night (single
ship missions—that didn’t ever change), and we had a pickup on the canal above the Mekong River east of My Tho. It
was dark as hell, and I made the initial approach. Down at the bottom all hell broke out, and I was too short anyway going
into the LZ. When I put the lights on, we were only a few feet over the ground (You guys remember how disoriented you
could get landing to a fire at night, don’t you?), and Howard said, “Shit Walt, pull dammit, pull pitch!” The next thing I
knew, it was almost already under my armpit!
That B model was a beauty and there will never be another like it! Anyway, we went in for another approach, and
Howard flew this one in. He scared me worse than I scared him, ’cause at the bottom we landed so abruptly, it was like
an autorotation. We got in under some fire, and he got the DFC, as he actually was flying at the time.
A year later at Flatiron at Rucker, we met up at the bar in the O Club and laughed and laughed about that night, as I
accused him of stealing my DFC!
—DUSTOFFer—
PAGE 20
The DUSTOFFer
From the Consultant
by COL Bob Mitchell
G
reetings from the Wiregrass
and home of the United States
Army Aviation Center of Excellence. The Medical Evacuation
Proponency Directorate (MEPD) continues to work significant and critical
evacuation issues with the senior Army
leadership. The fielding plan for conversion to the 15-ship/109 personnel
Medevac Company continues to move
forward for those units that are deploying to OEF.
Good news on the HH60M fielding
plan. C-Co 3/82 GSAB at Fort Bragg
is our first active duty unit to undergo
fielding/MTT training for their upcoming deployment to OEF. Other active
duty units will receive similar fielding
and training, but it will be slow-going
in the near future and is simply a product of how fast the assembly line at
Sikorsky can handle the demand.
(1) Recently, MEPD and USAACE
CDID completed a four-month analysis
on a proposed maintenance standalone capability within the Medevac
Company structure. The proposal to
TRADOC ARCIC was a recommended
course of action that is essentially a
plug and play maintenance slice from
the GSAB (with additional spaces for
augmentation to the GSAB) when the
Medevac Company would be deploying independently from its GSAB or
Task Force structure. Both USAACE
and AMEDDC&S were in agreement on this recommended course
of action. Unfortunately, TRADOC
recommended to the Army G-3 that
the structure remain unchanged and to
continue further analysis and simulation to strengthen our position that an
independent capability exists. We will
continue in this analysis to put the best
equipment and capabilities in the hands
of our Medevac Commanders.
(2) MEPD, in coordination with the
United States School of Aviation Medicine, is conducting an on-going 68WF
study to determine the future skill sets
needed for our Flight Medics. Clearly,
our Flight Medics must be trained and
credentialed to a higher level to meet
the future challenges of increased batFall/Winter 2010
tlespace and longer evacuation lines in
the asymmetric warfight. A recommendation from four course of action will
be presented to the Council of Colonels
in the near future for the way ahead for
our Flight Medic training that could
include paramedic-type training and/
or certification that mirrors our civilian
paramedic counterparts.
There is tremendous
movement by the joint
community and defense
industries to break the
maximum 120-knot
forward airspeed performance regime. . . .
(3) MEPD is participating with
Army aviation in a joint, multi-rolefuture vertical lift (JMR-FVL) study, on
developing future joint requirements,
with emphasis on improving forward
airspeed and other capabilities. There
is tremendous movement by the joint
community and defense industries to
break the maximum 120-knot, forward
airspeed performance regime in current
rotary-wing technology. MEPD will
participate in the Sikorsky X-2 flight
demonstration at West Palm Beach,
Florida, in breaking 250 knots forward
flight. More to follow.
Aviation Consultant news: congratulations to the following 67Js:
Promotion to Colonel:
LTC(P) Kerk Kerkenbush
LTC(P) Chuck Bradley
LTC(P) Keith Johnson
Promotion to LTC:
MAJ(P) Casey Clyde
MAJ(P) Mike Hughes
MAJ(P) Dirk Lafluer
MAJ(P) Ed Mandril (Below the
Zone)
MAJ(P) Buddy Meador (Below
the Zone)
LTHET Selection:
CPT Robert Federigan (Homeland
Security)
CPT Larry Smith (Military Medical
History USUHS)
CPT Brian Tripp (MBA Acquisition
Concentration)
I recently sent out a note to our senior 67Js, reference future implications
as a result of the Colonel Promotion
Board, which was released in September. In the interest of brevity, I will not
go into all the details. The approved
67J Way Ahead plan is on schedule
with the additions of three Colonel
and 16 Lieutenant Colonel positions
to the PMAD over the next three years.
Currently, we’ve filled four Lieutenant Colonel positions on the Accepted
Position List (ALPs) and are looking
to secure a Colonel ALP in the NATO/
SHAPE headquarters before the end of
the calendar year.
Keep in mind, these are not permanent authorized positions, as we have
to seek bill payers, either internally
or externally, to convert them to valid
positions. This will take time. The 67J
Way Ahead plan also incorporates a
strategy to select a secondary AOC
NLT the eight-year mark, with the
goal of either tracking permanently in
your secondary (must voluntarily give
up ACIP to change primary AOC) or
continue in the 67J arena at the 14 year
mark for the purposes of promotion.
Bottom line up front, the objective
force model for the 67Js at Lieutenant
Colonel and Colonel are out of balance
with respect to requirements vs. inventory. Our company grade inventory is
correct and working accordingly. You
should anticipate a Consultant Newsletter in the very near future that will
detail the 67J path ahead. I ask all of
you to stay in touch with me, so I can
best support your career development
needs as we move forward.
Thanks for all you do for our Army
and the nation. DUSTOFF!
—DUSTOFFer—
PAGE 21
MAJ Joseph Alexander Awarded
Bronze Order of St. Michael
MAJ Joseph C. Alexander, Commander of the U.S. Army Air Ambulance Detachment (USAAAD), Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras, was
awarded the bronze Order of St. Michael by 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation
Regiment Commander, LTC James G. Kanieki, on August 6, 2010, at Soto
Cano Air Base, Honduras, on the occasion of his permanent change of station. Alexander was recognized for his achievements during his 15 months
in command, to include seven lifesaving medical readiness exercises in
four different countries, flying more than 800 hours, and maintaining an
unprecedented four NVG HH-60 MEDEVAC crews and three deck-landing
qualified crews. Alexander will be attending Penn State University to earn
his master’s degree in Business Administration.
(Future, continued from page 7.)
“F” identifier.
Tracking of Flight Medics by the additional skill identifier (ASI), instead of
a special qualification identifier (SQI),
would be needed, and the ASI managed
in coordination with USASAM.
Continuation training at the unit
level must take place to sustain the
Flight Medic’s skills and could include
operating room and emergency room
rotations and ambulance ride-along
(Crew, continued from page 8.)
“He was in his early 20s, pale, and
he was sick,” Spraktes said. “You could
tell he was in shock. He was communicating, but he was having some airway
issues. It was an abdominal wound.
“I just made the determination right
then and there that the best thing for this
guy is to get him to definitive care, to
get him to surgery now, because I have
done this enough to know, and you
could see, that he was dying.”
To ensure the patient received
immediate care, Spraktes loaded the
young Soldier in the sked and called for
the Black Hawk to hoist him up. The
medic then opted to stay on the ground
with the infantry squad while the patient was flown to Honiker Miracle, a
nearby forward operating base staffed
with a field surgical team.
When the aircraft and crew returned,
PAGE 22
Broken Wing Award
Archives
CW3 Richard H. Walch recently received the Broken Wing
Award. Presenter was MG Henry
H. Harper, Commander of the U.S.
Army Depot System Command
(DESCOM). On May 1, 1984,
Walch was flying a routine mission
for the 421st Medical Company
(Air Ambulance), when his helicopter was struck by lightning.
Walch managed to land his heavily damaged helicopter in an open
field. Walch and his four-man crew
were not injured.
time.
The ARMS inspections would
evaluate the medical training to ensure
that sustainment training was taking
place and that unit Flight Surgeons and/
or Aeromedical Physician’s Assistants
are participating in, and are held responsible, for the training.
Finally, just as Army Aviators leave
flight school still needing training and
have to progress to RL-1 at unit level
per TC 1-237, a similar TC needs to
be developed and implemented for the
Flight Medics and units held accountable for the training, just as they are
for Aviators.
All the suggested changes outlined
are realistic, can be instituted rapidly,
and give Army Flight Medics, already
the world’s best, skills far beyond even
civilian counterparts, preparing them
to meet any challenge in any environment and continue the tradition of
“Dedicated Unhesitating Service to Our
Fighting Forces”—DUSTOFF. 
instead of picking up their medic, they
hoisted two additional injured Soldiers,
one with an ankle injury and another
with a gunshot wound to the leg.
While Gifford hoisted and began
treating the patients, the co-pilot, St.
Aubin, noticed enemy movement on
a ridge in the mountain valley and accurately called for air support from two
OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters.
In the aircraft en route to Honiker
Miracle, the battle-torn Soldiers informed the crew that not only was their
squad pinned down by enemy forces,
they were also critically low on water
and ammunition.
When the crew returned again to
pick up their medic, they hovered as
low as 30 feet before kicking out water
and ammunition near the pinned-down
American unit. Spraktes then called
again for the hoist to extract two heatinjured Soldiers after he determined
they could not make it off the battlefield
under their own power.
All told, five patients were rescued
that day from a firefight that would
have been considered unreachable
by a ground medical unit. The crew’s
elevated position and quick thinking
also allowed them to call in several
bombing and gun runs by rotary and
fixed-wing aircraft.
For their bravery, all four members
of the crew were awarded the Army
Aviation Association of America’s Air/
Sea Rescue Award in a ceremony at
Fort Rucker, Alabama, on January 28.
Spraktes was individually recognized
as the Medic of the Year. The AAAA
is a nonprofit organization dedicated
to supporting U.S. Army Aviation
Soldiers.
All 150 Soldiers who deployed
with Company C returned safely to the
United States October 15. 
The DUSTOFFer
Flight Paramedic Invents New Tool
to Document MEDEVAC Care
The March 2009 issue of The Gateway,
produced by Medical Communications
for Combat Casualty Care (MC4), featured an outstanding member of the
DUSTOFF team, SGT Michael Ferguson,
a member of the Army National Guard,
a Flight Medic with C Company, 1-168th
Aviation Regiment, deployed in Bagram,
Afghanistan.
S
GT Michael Ferguson dedicated
some 50 hours to create a new form
that captures MEDEVAC patient care
information while in transit. Upon arrival at the next level of care, the tool
is used in concert with the MC4 system
to ensure the transit care becomes part
of the Service member’s lifelong medical records.
The data are used to generate surveillance reports, providing insight to
the missions that MEDEVACs conduct
and the care they administer. Additionally, the information can be used to develop the next generation of equipment
and lifesaving techniques to help save
lives on the battlefield.
Gateway: Why did you develop the
new template to help document information during MEDEVAC missions?
Ferguson: While my unit attended
MC4 training at our mobilization site
at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, we found that
the MC4 handheld devices and laptops
are not user-friendly for pre-hospital
use. They are geared to the clinical
environment.
I have nearly ten years of prehospital experience as a firefighter
paramedic in one of the busiest medical systems in the U.S.—the region
surrounding Sacramento, California. I
understand that if I effectively capture
my procedures and the patient’s conditions, the awaiting medical staff would
have a solid foundation to effectively
continue care.
I believed MC4 could be used to
support our mission and also electronically chart patient information. This
way, the information would be part
of the Service member’s permanent
medical record.
Fall/Winter 2010
Gateway: What were some of the issues you saw with the MC4 system?
Ferguson: At first, we thought the
handhelds would be appropriate for
our needs, but we found that the information collected on the electronic
field medical cards (DD 1380s) was
too simplistic.
The problem with the outpatient software . . . is, it
wants . . . information too
detailed for our mission.
This is great . . . for doctors, but it doesn’t work
well for Flight Medics.
As Flight Medics, we chart a lot of
advanced, critical procedures that are
beyond the level of detail on the 1380s.
We’re doing more than applying a tourniquet, giving patients morphine, and
taking them to the next facility.
The problem with the outpatient
software on the laptop, AHLTA-T, is,
it wants us to enter information too
detailed for our mission. This is great
in a clinical setting for doctors, but it
doesn’t work well for Flight Medics.
An unwritten rule for Flight Medics
and pre-hospital providers is, we are
not supposed to make a diagnosis of a
patient’s condition. You just document
what you see and offer a differential
diagnosis, or what you think is wrong
with the person.
For example, if a patient experiences chest pain and I try to enter this
into AHLTA-T, the system wants me to
enter “chest pain with cardiac origin”
or other specific chest problems. Flight
Medics do not determine the origin of
a pain or injury. I only want to enter
“chest pain.”
For pre-hospital care, just about
everything we do is based off a primary
and secondary survey, a narrative, and
then a timeline with the medications
and treatments given at specific times.
It was important to have a template with
standardized steps that best match the
symptoms we see and our protocols.
The processes needed to be as basic
as possible.
Gateway: What steps did you take to
develop the patient care record (PCR)
form?
Ferguson: While we were at Fort Sill,
I looked around MC4’s online helpdesk
for similar documents or templates
to help with our mission. I found the
trauma nursing note and modified it to
meet our needs.
I am also the systems administrator
for the unit, so I had access to one of
the laptops. I set it up and worked the
AHLTA-T to see how I could populate
the new form based on the information
the application prompts clinical personnel. The creation and formatting of the
form involved a lot of trial and error.
Throughout my testing, I had generated approximately 40 test encounters.
When I finished, I reimaged the laptop
so the test data would not transfer to
central databases, the Theater Medical Data Store (TMDS) and the Joint
Medical Workstation (JMeWS). After
approximately 50 hours and many revisions, the PCR form was complete.
The template has the standardized
diagnoses we use. The nomenclature
is not exactly what we would like to
have, but it is the closest to the information we want to track. Primarily,
this was done so we would have the
ability to generate surveillance reports
in JMeWS to track the history of our
patients and the care we provide.
Gateway: How do you use the PCR
with the MC4 systems?
Ferguson: We transcribe the patient
information and our treatments to the
form while we’re en route to the hospital. When we arrive at the treatment
facility, we give the staff a verbal report
based on our paper forms.
Our standard is that MEDEVAC
personnel are to enter the data from
(Flight, continued on page 24.)
PAGE 23
(Flight, continued from page 23.)
the PCR into MC4 within 24 hours
from patient contact. Typically, the
information is entered after the Flight
Medic’s shift. He creates a new patient
encounter in AHLTA-T and then attaches the electronic version of the PCR
to the record.
Because of the efficiency of the
hospital staff, it is not uncommon for
the patient to be on a plane to Germany
for additional care as the information
from the PCR is entered into MC4.
Our documentation might not be
available electronically when the doctors and nurses in Afghanistan begin
treating the patient, but we want to
make sure that when the wounded warrior arrives in Germany, the medical
staff has the full medical picture and
can see what the Flight Medics did and
observed.
Gateway: What benefits have you seen
since utilizing the PCR?
Ferguson: My unit has flight crews in
four locations utilizing the PCR and
entering the data into MC4 systems. We
have electronically documented every
flight mission conducted since we arrived in theater in mid-December 2008.
Each location has one MC4 laptop,
and each computer has a separate unit
identification code (UIC), so we have
the ability to run reports by location
using JMeWS.
Because we have used the PCR and
MC4 for a short time, it is a little early
to determine trends. To date, we chart
approximately 150 calls per month. As
we run future MEDEVAC missions and
enter more patient data, we’ll be able
to generate thorough reports on our
efforts. When the weather gets warmer
and ground forces conduct more missions, we can potentially chart as many
as 250 calls on a monthly basis.
We are also working to bring additional locations online where Flight
Medics are located. Our standardization instructor travels throughout Afghanistan to help bring these locations
online. Once this is complete, we will
be able to provide additional information about our efforts.
Our Brigade Surgeon, MAJ Laura
Kaster, knows about efforts with the
PAGE 24
PCR, and she is happy with the document. The form displays in JMeWS as a
rich text format document. MAJ Kaster
and others perform a random sample of
our reports by clicking on the document
and viewing specific PCRs.
Gateway: Why did you feel it was
important to track your missions and
generate reports with JMeWS?
. . . we are performing and
documenting advanced,
critical procedures. Pushing medications needs to
be documented . . . to
have a future impact.
Ferguson: I felt it was important to
bring visibility to the level of care being offered by MEDEVAC crews. The
effort and level of care put forth by this
unit on a daily basis is ’way beyond
the common perception of MEDEVACs. I think many people believe a
MEDEVAC consists of putting injured
personnel on a helicopter, the pilots fly
very fast to the hospital, and little care
is given en route.
This misconception might also
stem from the difference between unit
locations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In
Iraq, there are many medical assets
and forward operating bases in close
proximity, and the average flight times
are five minutes. In Afghanistan, due to
the remote locations where missions
are conducted and the location of treatment facilities, flight times can range
from 20 to 60 minutes.
During the long flights, we are performing and documenting advanced,
critical procedures. Pushing medications needs to be documented in the
Service member’s permanent file to
have a future impact.
Recently, we had a patient who
needed to be sedated and put on a
ventilator en route to a hospital. Our actions were credits for saving a wounded
warrior’s life because of the massive
bleeding in the airway,
We’re trying to capture enough
information and generate comprehen-
sive documentation, so a future study
can be performed regarding the role
of MEDEVAC and what direction it
needs to go.
In a short time in theater, different
groups have come into our hangar to
collect information about what we
do, including the Army’s Institute for
Surgical Research. Instead of showing
them the data collected in the MC4
systems, we point them to JMeWS, so
they can review all the information for
themselves.
I believe the documentation we
produce will help shine more light on
the activities of MEDEVAC missions,
so future changes and enhancements
can be made. As a result, more lives
will be saved.
Gateway: Will the unit that replaces
you continue to use the PCR and MC4
systems to document the care performed in transit?
Ferguson: That is actually one of
our concerns. We do not know if the
next unit will continue to use MC4 to
document their MEDEVAC missions
the same way we have done. This is a
command decision. Since many of us
have experience with electronic charting, we know the information can be
used to provide accurate reports and
visibility about our efforts.
We are trying to incorporate our
process into every MEDEVAC team
and make it mandatory. Our medical
officers are onboard with this and are
working to make it happen. It is unknown whether the system will take
hold and if others will embrace it like
we have. 
The DUSTOFFer
My Father: Remembering a Hero
I
Heather Harrington, daughter of longtime DUSTOFFer Glen Melton, penned a memorable remembrance of her father.
t can take something as jarring as
death to make us appreciate certain
things in our lives, or to open our
eyes to the things we never knew we
had to begin with.
As the only child of a single, retired
Army Captain, I thought I was all alone
when I got a call in the middle of the
night from the cardiac intensive care
unit at a hospital (four states away) in
the town where my father lived. The
voice on the other end of the line told
me that my dad had undergone emergency surgery, suffered a major heart
attack and probably didn’t have much
time. I needed to get there as soon as
possible to say good-bye.
After flying through the night and a
three-hour car ride, I finally made it to
my father’s side. Although I’d seen him
just a few weeks earlier, the man in the
bed I didn’t recognize. He was swollen,
on a ventilator, and had tubes protruding from all over his body. Where was
that handsome helicopter pilot I had
called daddy for the last 34 years?
By the grace of God, my dad, or
“Catman,” as I started calling him
(for he clearly had nine lives), pulled
through and woke up two weeks later.
It was a daunting task, trying to
make sure all his friends around the
world were notified about his condition (it wasn’t good). After emailing
everyone in his address book, I sat back
and waited for the replies.
One of his DUSTOFF pals, a man
I now refer to as Uncle Dan, swooped
into action and began forwarding
my email updates to everyone in the
DUSTOFF organization. The emails I
received were full of prayers, support
and later, beautiful memories of my
father.
Although he never made it out of
the hospital, my dad and I had four
precious months together. We learned
a great deal about each other and grew
to love one another more than I ever
knew could be possible. We laughed,
we cried, and each night we played a
mean game of Jeopardy.
He told me how proud he was of
me for being there, for taking care of
him and all the daily nothings that fill
Fall/Winter 2010
our days, and mostly for taking charge
at the hospital. My Captain expressed
his amazement of my knowledge
of his many medical conditions and
appreciated that I refused to let any
outside stressors through the doors
of the hospital to upset him. Dying is
stressful enough.
In return, I told him how proud I was
of him for everything he’d ever done:
. . . my dad and I had four
precious months together. We learned a great
deal about each other and
grew to love one another
more than I ever knew
could be possible.
fighting for our country, overcoming
adversity after a helicopter crash that
left him paralyzed when I was a little
girl, and for being such a loving father
to me and friend to so many. I shared
my knowledge of aromatherapy and
skin care, while he told me his views on
just about everything possible. It was
during this time that it became clear to
me just what a stud my father was.
We talked about everything, but the
stories always seemed to go back to
Viet Nam. My dad voluntarily served
two tours as a MEDEVAC pilot in combat, bravely rescuing injured Soldiers.
Among his many honors, he was
awarded the Distinguished Flying
Cross. Although he humbly downplayed it, his friends, and later one of
his doctors, were quick to explain to
me what a huge deal this was.
When I asked if he was afraid
during his flights into enemy fire, his
reply was, “Hell yes, but, my God, I
loved it.” And loved it he did. When
he would drift off, often after a dose
of pain medication, I would watch his
hands move in his sleep. He was flying
his beloved Huey.
It didn’t take long for me to figure
out that because of his courage, generations of children and grandchildren are
alive today. To say I love and respect
this man would be a massive under-
Glen Melton and daughter
Heather Harrington at the
2006 DUSTOFF Reunion.
statement.
This brave and generous Soldier
gave gifts he wasn’t even aware of.
He brought to me strength and courage I didn’t know existed. Through
his service in the Army, he gave me
family I never knew I had. The men
of DUSTOFF are forever my uncles.
They showed up, literally and figuratively, even as family members and
friends faded. Colonel Sylvester (now
my Uncle Ernie) drove four hours each
way one day to say a prayer at my father’s bedside, and later delivered the
most beautiful eulogy at his memorial
service.
When it was time for my father’s
burial at Arlington National Cemetery,
a handful of his buddies from Nam and
Germany appeared in the family waiting room before the funeral. We stood
in a circle as they each told fantastic
stories. It was the most befitting goodbye for the hero I was lucky enough to
call my father.
As the band played Taps by his
graveside, a helicopter just happened
to fly overhead. Coincidence? I don’t
think so.
—DUSTOFFer—
PAGE 25
32nd Annual DUSTOFF Association Reunion
February 11–13, 2011
Schedule of Events
Friday, 11 February 2011
1200–1900 — Registration
0900–1000 — Registration for Chuck Mateer Golf Classic (Hombre Golf Course)
1000–1500 — Chuck Mateer Golf Classic (Hombre Golf Course)
1400–1800 — Hospitality Room open
1900–2200 — Reunion Mixer and Buffet
2200–0200 — Hospitality Room open
Saturday, 12 February 2011
0900–1000 — Professional Meeting
0900–1300 — Spouses’ Shopping/Luncheon—Pier Park/Margaritaville
1000–1100 — Business Meeting
1430–1600 — Hall of Fame Induction, Rescue of the Year, and Crew Members of the Year Awards
1500–1800 — Hospitality Room open
1800–1900 — Cash bar at Banquet
1900–2200 — Dinner/Dance (Casual/Aloha):
Welcome
Invocation
Dinner
Entertainment/Dancing
2200–0200 — Hospitality Room open
Sunday, 13 February 20011
0900–1000 — DUSTOFF Memorial Service
Edgewater Beach Resort
Panama City, Florida
You may register online using your credit card at <http://dustoff.org/reunion/registrationform.htm>.
You may reserve your room at the Edgewater Beach Resort at <www.edgewaterbeachresort.com>.
Use the promo code 1679, or call 800-874-8686 or 850-235-4044.
Pier Park
Panama City, Florida
PAGE 26
Margaritaville Restaurant
Panama City, Florida
The DUSTOFFer
32nd Annual DUSTOFF Association Reunion
February 11–13, 2011
Registration Form
Member’s name __________________________________Spouse’s name ___________________________________
Home/Mailing address _____________________________________________________________________________
Email address ______________________________
Dues:Totals
Life Member Dues $100 (one-time payment) (Enlisted—$50)
$ __________
Reunion Registration:
Member/Spouse $30/person
_____ persons
$ __________
Non-member/Spouse Single-day Registration
$35/person
$15/person
_____ persons
______persons
$ __________
$___________
Late Fee (if after 31 Jan 11)
$15/person
______persons
$___________
You may register online using your credit card at <http://dustoff.org/reunion/registrationform.htm>.
Hotel Reservations:
To reserve your room, you must call the Edgewater Beach Resort at 800-874-8686 or 850-235-4044 to reserve your room.
Mention you are with the DUSTOFF Association to get the special rate of $81/night. Or you may book your hotel room
online at <http://www.edgewaterbeachresort.com>. Use promo code 1679. These rates apply for February 9–15, 2011.
If you would like to stay longer at that rate, call Dan Gower, 210-379-3985, and he’ll try to arrange it with the hotel.
Chuck Mateer Golf Classic
All Golfers (includes cart)
$50/person
_____ persons
Clubs rent for $30/day—Paid directly to Hombre Golf Course at the tournament
Friday Night
Mixer Buffet $36/person
_____ persons
Southern Traditional Chicken-Fried Chicken or Blackened Pork Loin
Spouses’ Luncheon
Margaritaville
$25/person
Round-trip bus from hotel to Pier Park $8/person
$ __________
$ __________
_____ persons
_____ persons
$ __________
$ __________
_____ persons
$ __________
Saturday Night Dinner/Dance
Dress: Casual/Aloha
Buffet:
Baked Salmon, Peel-&-Eat Shrimp
$44/person
Please send registration form and check to:
DUSTOFF Association
P. O. Box 8091
Wainwright Station
San Antonio, TX
Room Rates (subject to prevailing government per diem)
Beachfront 1 BR Beachfront 2 BR
Beachfront 3 BR
Fall/Winter 2010
$81
$119
$149
Villa 1 BR
Villa 2 BR
Villa 3 BR
$81
$99
$125
PAGE 27
DUSTOFF Association
P. O. Box 8091
San Antonio, TX 78208-0091
Presort STD
U.S. Postage Paid
Permit No. 3017
San Antonio, TX
Address service requested
DUSTOFF Association
Membership Application/Change of Address
q
I want to join the Association as a Life Member
Officers and Civilians
E-9 and below
q
Check here if change of address, or e-mail change to ed@dustoff.org
$100.00 One-time fee
$ 50.00 One-time fee
Rank ____ Last name ___________________ First name ___________________ M.I. _____
Mailing address ________________________________________________________________
E-mail _________________________ Spouse’s name _______________________________
Home phone __________________________ Work phone___________________________
Send check or money order, payable
to DUSTOFF Association, to:
DUSTOFF Association
P. O. Box 8091
Wainwright Station
San Antonio, TX 78208
You may register online using your credit card at <http://dustoff.org>.
PAGE 28
The DUSTOFFer