THE DUSTOFFER - DUSTOFF Association
Transcription
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..... [email protected] 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.......... [email protected] DUSTOFF! Bryant Harp DUSTOFF Association Executive Council President: Bryant Harp......... [email protected] Executive Director: Dan Gower.......... [email protected] Secretary: John McMahan.... [email protected] Historian: Patrick Zenk........ [email protected] DUSTOFFer Editor: Jim Truscott......... [email protected] Web Site: http://www.dustoff.org Ronald Huether... [email protected] uuuuu DUSTOFFer layout & design Susan Gower..................................... [email protected] 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 [email protected] (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)................... [email protected] Byron Howlett (1982–83)............... [email protected] Ed Taylor (1983–84)....................... [email protected] Thomas Scofield (1984–85)............ [email protected] Joseph Madrano (1985–86)............ [email protected] Jim Ritchie (1986–87) Donald Conkright (1987–88).......... [email protected] Roy Hancock (1988–89)................. [email protected] Glen Melton (1989–90).................. deceased Gerald Nolan (1990–91)................. [email protected] Jim Truscott (1991–92)................... [email protected] Roger Opio (1992–93).................... [email protected] Ed Bradshaw (1993–94)................. [email protected] Robert Romines (1994–96)............ deceased Daniel Gower (1996–97)................ [email protected] Charlie Webb (1997–98)................. [email protected] Herb Coley (1998–99).................... [email protected] Merle Snyder (1999–2000)............. [email protected] Gregg Griffin (2000–01)................. [email protected] Jeff Mankoff (2001–02).................. [email protected] Ken Crook (2002–03)..................... [email protected] Art Hapner (2003–04).................... [email protected] Ernie Sylvester (2004–05) ............. [email protected] Garry Atkins (2005-06).................. [email protected] Doug Moore (2006-07)................... [email protected] Timothy Burke (2007-08)............... [email protected] Robert Mitchell (2008-10).............. [email protected] 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: [email protected] 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......................... [email protected] Members at Large David Litteral...................................david.litteral@us.army.mil Ron [email protected] 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 Tracy Banta Richard Boeshaar Gerald Bonner Otto Brauer Dwight Brown Michael Chase Gregory Crawford 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 photographs with your article or attach them to your e-mail. Send typed, double-spaced hard copy to the address below, or e-mail your article to ed@ dustoff.org or [email protected]. Please send your submissions to: The DUSTOFFer P. O. Box 8091 San Antonio, TX 78208 Treasurer’s Report 5/1/2010–10/31/10 Interest Income $ 68.94 Membership Dues 2,977.10 Memorial Donations 200.00 Sales Income 2,509.78 Total Income $ 5,755.82 their contributions to DUSTOFF. Do your home- Memorial Expenses $ work. Find out about that man or woman who Newsletter Publishing 1,994.61 made a difference in your career by his or her Operating Expenses 2,814.63 inspiration. Research your hero and nominate Reunion Expenses them. Deadline is May 1. Details are on the Sales Expenses 4,930.52 dustoff.org homepage. Click on the Hall of Total Expenses $ 9,564.60 Overall Total $-3,808.78 DUSTOFFers, don’t let our legacy go untold. The Hall of Fame honors those who exhibited our ethics and standards in their actions and Fame tab at the left of the opening page for information. It’s OUR Hall of Fame; let’s make 44.50 -219.66 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 [email protected] $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
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