For educational purposes
Drawing on its first experiments with helicopters in Korea, the Army in Vietnam came to rely almost entirely on the helicopter for medical evacuation.
The Dust Off and Medevac helicopter ambulance units tested and perfected for medical use the Army's new helicopler, the UH-1 ("Huey" Iroquois), and developed several new devices, especially the hoist, that helped save thousands of American and allied lives between 1962 and 1973.
The pilots of these helicopter ambulances displayed a courage and devotion to duty that earned them widespread respect from soldiers in Vietnam.
Drawing on its first experiments with helicopters in Korea, the Army in Vietnam came to rely almost entirely on the helicopter for medical evacuation.
The Dust Off and Medevac helicopter ambulance units tested and perfected for medical use the Army's new helicopler, the UH-1 ("Huey" Iroquois), and developed several new devices, especially the hoist, that helped save thousands of American and allied lives between 1962 and 1973.
The pilots of these helicopter ambulances displayed a courage and devotion to duty that earned them widespread respect from soldiers in Vietnam.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Among the millions of casualties produced in the Vietnam War, more than 900,000 survived their injuries,
00:21thanks to the uncommon dedication and bravery of a relatively small group of men known as Dustoff.
00:29They flew the most dangerous missions in South Vietnam to evacuate wounded troops from the battlefield and to keep them alive long enough to receive more thorough medical care.
00:40This is the incredible story of the men who volunteered to fly those missions, the dangers they faced, sacrifices they made, pain they suffered, and the lives they saved.
00:59In Vietnam, all helicopter pilots followed one golden rule.
01:10Never fly over the same area twice, especially if you had come under fire the first time.
01:17That rule was especially true for landing zones, or LZs, where enemy troops routinely ambushed vulnerable chopper crews.
01:23On April 12, 1964, that rule was defied, with tragic consequences for a young H-21 pilot named John Givan.
01:38That day, Lieutenant Givan was transporting a load of South Vietnamese troops to a district capital that had been taken over by Communist Viet Cong forces.
01:57As soon as the troops had been offloaded, the empty transport struggled to regain altitude, but then spun around and flew directly across the LZ.
02:10The fire directed on us by the VC was overwhelming.
02:17You could hear it. It was just like popcorn machines going off everywhere.
02:23At about the time the altimeter read 400 feet, I thought, this is too good to be true. We might make it.
02:30Well, just a few seconds after that, literally, everything from just about right here below my knee was in little bitty pieces of meat, bone, and blood dripping from the top of the cockpit.
02:44Givan was rushed to a nearby staging area in a dust-off chopper piloted by Major Charles Kelly.
02:52The crew was met by Captain James Ralph, a flight surgeon who recognized the severity of Givan's condition, and immediately began treating his wounds.
03:01This footage was taken as the men frantically prepared to evacuate Givan to Saigon.
03:06The artery had retracted up into his thigh. There's no way I could get to it, nothing I could clamp, so I had to pack several gauze dressings in there and just hold them with my thumbs.
03:18We took off, went to altitude, and he passed out. He was kind of in and out of it anyway, but he just went from white to gray at that point.
03:28I told the pilot we've got to stay at treetop level.
03:30The pilot, Major Kelly, descended to preserve what little oxygen flow remained in Givan's bloodstream. The entire crew was now at risk of coming under fire from enemy gunners.
03:45Givan had a slim chance of surviving, but only if his condition could be stabilized, and if he could receive thorough trauma care within minutes.
03:54In a desperate attempt to reduce blood loss, Captain Ralph continued to grasp Givan's open wound until he was in surgery.
04:07He was the closest to dying of anyone I took care of in Vietnam. He was worse than pale. He was turning gray. He had no pulse that you could feel.
04:16Unfortunately, the damage to the lower portion of Givan's right leg was beyond repair.
04:25But thanks to the incredible skill and courage of a dust-off crew, and the extraordinary efforts of the surgeons and medical staff that attended to his wounds, Givan's life was saved.
04:35During the Korean War, the air ambulance concept was a proven success, and the dust-off helicopter, the Bell UH-1 Huey, was designed especially for medical evacuation.
04:50But there was a time when these dedicated dust-off helicopters in Vietnam were almost grounded.
04:59That was before Major Charles Kelly, the pilot who evacuated Lieutenant Givan, arrived in country in January of 1964.
05:09Kelly was the third commander of the 57th Medical Detachment, a small field evacuation unit that was sent to Vietnam in early 1962.
05:17When he took command, the unit was virtually under siege by senior level brass.
05:29They thought that a dedicated unit of air ambulances was a waste of a most precious commodity, helicopters.
05:36Kelly's first order of business was to confront the unit's detractors and to prove them wrong.
05:42Kelly came back to us and he says, let me tell you something.
05:45They don't wish us well. They want our aircraft.
05:49So the only way we're going to keep them is to prove that nobody else can do what we do better than we do.
05:56The 57th had amassed an impressive record of evacuations, despite numerous political and operational obstacles.
06:12But Kelly instilled a new sense of urgency in crews and made several dramatic operational changes.
06:18First, Kelly taught his crews never to refuse a mission, never to come home without the patient, and always to put the safety of the wounded first.
06:32He then split the detachment and relocated two of the choppers to Sok Trang, in the middle of Vietnam's expansive delta, where Viet Cong activity was rapidly increasing.
06:44Radio communication was extremely unreliable, so Kelly directed his crews not just to wait for evacuation requests, but to actually seek out new business.
06:58In an extremely bold move, Kelly himself also began flying at night.
07:05Each evening, he set off on a 400-mile circuit to recover wounded troops and civilians that he knew would be out there.
07:13Frequently, he arrived home in a chopper that was full of holes and spurting gas.
07:22Most pilots were soon flying more than 150 hours a month, even though they were supposed to be grounded if they flew more than 100.
07:31The value and appreciation of Dustoff crews grew immensely under Kelly's command.
07:36Dustoff came to represent a ray of humanity and hope in an increasingly brutal and inhumane conflict.
07:47They set a standard that would be hard to match in anybody's war.
07:55It gave us a very strong feeling of security, knowing those medevac guys would be in there to get us.
08:01We loved them to death.
08:04And we knew particularly that Major Charles L. Kelly would be there.
08:10People appreciated him very much because they didn't have to wait until morning to get their people out.
08:16And they knew he would come any time, day or night, whatever the weather was.
08:20They didn't have to wait.
08:22And that's a great thing for a person to know if there's somebody next to you that's hurt.
08:25In a letter to the U.S. Surgeon General, Kelly described the commitment of Dustoff crews to their cause.
08:35Our job is evacuation of casualties from the battlefield, he wrote.
08:39This we are doing day and night, without escort aircraft, and with only one ship for each mission.
08:47The other units fly in groups, rarely at night, and are always heavily armed.
08:55The strength of Kelly's determination to keep Dustoff in the air and his dedication to the wounded on the ground were clear in the daring way he flew.
09:02This was the case on July 1, 1964, when a call for Dustoff came from a unit near Vin Long.
09:19Approaching the area, Kelly radioed the men on the ground and asked them to mark their position with smoke.
09:24As he neared the ground, enemy forces turned their weapons on the large, vulnerable Huey.
09:34The advisors on the ground frantically radioed Kelly, warning him to get out of the area as fast as possible.
09:41When I have your wounded, he answered.
09:44Suddenly, Kelly's Huey pitched upwards, nosed over, and plunged to the earth, the rotors beating into the ground.
09:58My God, he whispered, as a bullet entered an open cargo door and pierced his heart.
10:17Major Charles L. Kelly was the 49th American to die in Vietnam.
10:22Major Charles L. Kelly was the 49th American to die in Vietnam.
10:29But his legacy would live on for years to come.
10:39Major Charles Kelly did not die in vain.
10:43At the time of his death, roughly 18,000 U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam.
10:48By the end of 1966, nearly 400,000 American troops were stationed throughout the country, and the conflict was becoming increasingly bloody.
11:01Ultimately, millions of military and civilian personnel would be wounded or killed in a bitter struggle that would last more than a decade.
11:08Major Kelly's sacrifice was greeted throughout South Vietnam and the United States by an outpouring of praise and honor that ensured the continued existence of Dustoff.
11:19His legacy for the conduct of Dustoff operations could be summed up by some of the last words he spoke.
11:28When I have your wounded.
11:30A motto that men like Major Patrick Brady, one of two Dustoff pilots to receive the Medal of Honor, took to heart.
11:37The operation shack would get the mission.
11:46Well, as soon as the guy came on the radio Dustoff, have a mission ready to copy, he'd hit the buzzer.
11:52And that alerted the crew.
11:54And immediately the co-pilot would head for the aircraft.
11:57The pilot would head for the operation shack.
11:59And you didn't walk.
12:00You ran.
12:02And the first thing you wanted was the coordinates and the heading.
12:06And with those two bits of information, he would run to the aircraft, which would already be running.
12:12The co-pilot would start it.
12:13Everything was ready to go.
12:15You're off the ground before three minutes.
12:17And you call the guy on the ground right now.
12:20As soon as you break ground.
12:22Because then he stops keeping time.
12:24He knows you're on the way.
12:25He then is relieved.
12:29Initially, Dustoff pilots essentially abandoned conventional combat flight precautions in an effort to get to the wounded as fast as possible.
12:44Even if there had been time to receive it, information about the location and strength of enemy threats and the number and type of casualties was often unavailable.
12:53The only intelligence that we had was that which we found out along the way.
13:01We had no intelligence briefing.
13:03There wasn't a, there wasn't time for an intelligence briefing.
13:06There wasn't time for flight planning.
13:10In the absence of intelligence about enemy threats, pilots developed their own set of defensive flight tactics.
13:16Many preferred to fly at treetop level en route to the pickup area.
13:21This prevented enemy gunners from finding their mark.
13:25Dustoff crews became renowned for their willingness to fly by the seat of their pants directly into active combat, even at night or in bad weather.
13:35In time, the situation improved slightly.
13:42Crews began receiving what became known as the essential elements of information.
13:47We would be able to write down on a piece of paper location, radio call sign, radio frequency, number and type of patients, security of the area, physical condition of the area.
14:04All these kinds of things that are nice to know if you are a pilot.
14:08Although such information was extremely helpful in theory, Dustoff crews still had to venture into the unknown virtually every time they set off on a mission.
14:26One of the most significant problems lay in the fact that men who were immersed in the confusion and trauma of combat were often prone to providing inaccurate information.
14:36Often times, the guy on the ground didn't know where he was.
14:41And he'd give you a set of coordinates that, you know, you get there, he is nobody there.
14:47While crews could usually pinpoint the location of troops by homing in on their radio signal, there were other more significant problems.
14:58One of the most difficult involved the prioritization of patients.
15:02Various categories of precedents, ranging from urgent to priority to routine, were supposed to be assigned to patients based on the length of time that they would likely be able to survive.
15:15In reality, though, many patients drew urgent classifications based on their pain rather than on the severity of their condition.
15:22Ground commanders were anxious to see that any wounded man was taken out as soon as possible.
15:28This often limited Dustoff's ability to evacuate those who needed help most.
15:33It made no sense at all.
15:36You know, you could have both legs blown off and not necessarily be urgent because your limbs are gone already.
15:42And if you're stable, you live for a long time.
15:45So, I said there are two kinds of patients, an urgent patient and a non-urgent patient.
15:50Now, if you've got them day or night, we're going to come and get them right now.
15:55But we need to know urgent or non-urgent so that we can, in fact, best allocate our resources.
16:02The security of a pickup area was perhaps the most bewildering information that Dustoff received from the field.
16:19Ground troops were supposed to assess security so that the crews could determine how, or even if, they could get in and out of an area safely.
16:27But every crew knew that ground forces were hard-pressed to assess the relative security of any area.
16:36They also knew that enemy troops often laid in wait to ambush Dustoff choppers that were sure to come for the wounded.
16:44Most crews simply prepared for the worst, while maintaining a firm sense of resolve to get in and out regardless of the danger.
16:53Security of an area made no sense at all.
16:57Somebody had shot those guys you were going to go get.
17:00And he had been shot just a few minutes before.
17:04And that's why you were going in there.
17:06For some guy on the ground to be forced to tell you it's secure or insecure was an unfair burden on that guy.
17:13He wanted him out. And he wanted him out now.
17:15And who in the hell are we to say that we can't go into an insecure area when those guys live in insecure areas?
17:30While most crews were willing to take enormous risks, their ability to assess the real level of threat was often complicated by the emotional stress of the men they were trying to help.
17:40The agony of helplessly waiting with wounded comrades who were in great pain and who might not survive led many men to underestimate enemy threats for fear that Dustoff crews would shy away from the mission.
17:56All crews felt a great deal of empathy for the plight of the men on the ground, but they also worked hard to convince troops that accurate threat information was vital to the interests of everyone involved.
18:14I know from so many missions, the anguish of this man down there that has people that he knows and he wants out of there because they're dying.
18:27And if he forgets to tell you that the enemy is within 200 yards and you ask and he says, well, there's been light contact when in effect it's been heavy.
18:39You know, you understand that. And after a while you sort of accept this.
18:46They will lie to you, as would I, to get you to come for their wounded buddy.
18:51And that's the worst thing you can have because you come in there fat, dumb and happy and then the first thing you hear, boom, somebody's shot on your aircraft.
18:58So I said, don't talk to me about security. Here's all I ask. If you will stand up when we land and help us load the patient, I'll come in.
19:11Just give me a break on location and weaponry of the enemy. I'm going to turn my tail into the fire.
19:18Get him on as quick as you can so we can get out with everybody alive.
19:24Helicopter operations in Vietnam were notoriously demanding. Flight crews were confronted with virtually every type of terrain imaginable.
19:45Landing zones or LZs were often nothing more than small clearings carved out of the jungle.
19:55Merely bringing a chopper into a low hover in the rough, unforgiving terrain taxed even the most accomplished pilots.
20:04To make matters worse, enemy forces frequently booby-trapped potential LZs or set up deadly ambushes.
20:11Dustoff pilots faced even worse conditions than most crews.
20:18When called in to recover wounded troops, they usually flew into an area where enemy forces were nearby.
20:25And often, the unit they were coming to help was still involved in active combat.
20:30As a result, the entire Dustoff crew had to be prepared for virtually any contingency as they approached a pickup area.
20:37Dustoff 74, this is Matthew 65, go.
20:41That's Dustoff 74, we're approaching your area from the north at this time.
20:45Pop your smoke at this time, what's your recommended approach into the area and what is your security?
20:49Roger, we are popping smoke at this time, recommended direction of approach is from north to south.
20:55Tactical situation and the area is secure.
20:58One of the things we learned early on was that the enemy listened to us on the frequency.
21:05We had only one frequency that we all used, dedicated to medical evacuation.
21:10And the guy on the ground would say, Dustoff, I'm popping yellow smoke.
21:14And then there would be four or five yellow smokes down there.
21:17So, we got smart and we said, all right, you pop your smoke and I will identify it.
21:29There's Dustoff 74, this man approach from north to south.
21:33I have green smoke.
21:35Roger, that's affirmative, we have green smoke.
21:37And your direction approach is upon.
21:39That's Dustoff 74, I'm on final approach at this time, letting down.
21:43Roger, we have someone out there to guide you in.
21:467-4.
21:48Okay, lock and load one on final approach at this time.
21:52Pick up the hedgerows on the left and right.
21:55Area is secure, we'll go in as the attack of security is not secure.
22:00Pick up the hedgerows left and right, final approach.
22:06Every evacuation attempt was filled with uncertainty and danger.
22:10Ground troops frequently had to carry their wounded a considerable distance over rugged terrain, until they could find a large enough clearing for Dustoff's chopper.
22:22Each clearing was different and posed dozens of new and unique threats.
22:26It was the aircraft commander's job to negotiate these ever-changing risks.
22:32In time though, repeated exposure to such demanding flight conditions led many pilots to develop a sixth sense for finding the best way in and out of virtually any area.
22:44As I learned to analyze the terrain, the aircraft capabilities, the enemy location, friendly location, the weaponry that we were up against, if you put that all in your mind and just kind of mixed it together, a highway would actually spring out of the sky and it would just take you in there in the safest possible way.
23:05Helicopter crews were usually ambushed when they were most vulnerable, when they were just settling into a hover or were resting on the ground.
23:20Once in the landing zone, the key to safety was speed and the key to speed was teamwork.
23:26The crew chief and the medic quickly loaded or supervised the loading of patients, while the pilot waited for the signal to take off. Every second counted.
23:39We tried to rely on speed so that we would minimize our time within the range of the enemy.
23:46And the hardest part of the mission, I suppose, from a pilot's point of view, is the fact that you were there on the ground stationary.
23:54You were not flying anymore and not until all the wounded were placed on board.
23:59And even though it was an experience that might have lasted maybe 15 seconds at the most, I assure you, it felt more like 15 minutes.
24:16While moments spent in any LZ seemed to last for an eternity, nothing could compare to the challenge of evacuations from areas that were completely inaccessible.
24:27To recover patients in rough or waterlogged terrain, the pilot came into a hover directly above the wounded.
24:34The crew then lowered a 250-foot cable from a hoist powered by an electric winch.
24:39If the patient was seriously wounded, he was placed in a Stokes rigid litter so that he could gently be raised to the crew.
24:51In a combat zone, nothing is more vulnerable than a helicopter maintaining a high hover.
24:58No matter what happened, the crew had to hold that hover until the patient was safely on board.
25:04It was often impossible to lower a litter because of dense jungle foliage.
25:12To solve this problem, a bullet-shaped jungle penetrator equipped with straps and three paddle-like seats was often lowered so that the patient could be extracted through the trees.
25:26It took everyone in the crew to perform these hazardous missions.
25:30One false move could result in tragedy for the patient, the crew, and even the troops below.
25:40Most times the crew would lay on the floor looking out the door, trying to stay on a reference point and keep the thing steady over a small hole in triple canopy jungle.
25:50Where you would lower a jungle penetrator or a stokes litter or something like that where they could then load the patient on and you pull him up through the trees without hooking him on trees.
26:00I have been on hoist missions where you couldn't get to the ground but you could come down in the trees, move over another layer, and you'd look up and there would actually be trees over the top of you while you're dropping a hoist down to pull the patients up.
26:15In 1967, Dustoff evacuated almost 1400 patients on hoist missions.
26:25Nearly 100,000 wounded were evacuated overall, but success came with a high price.
26:30That same year, 40 crewmen were killed, 58 were wounded, and 24 helicopters, clearly marked with big red crosses, were lost in action.
26:43According to terms established by the Geneva Convention, medical evacuation helicopters were not to carry arms or to engage in combat.
26:52But these terms also stipulated that medical evacuation personnel were not to be fired upon.
26:59In Vietnam, both of these mandates were often ignored.
27:04In some cases, formal defensive measures were taken to protect crews, such as adding door gunners and requesting gunship escorts.
27:12I worked hard to make sure my medics were armed, not only with a rifle but with a pistol, because they had to leave the helicopter and they couldn't take the rifle and carry a patient at the same time.
27:27So they had to have a sidearm for protection.
27:29The brutal and unpredictable nature of combat in Vietnam proved time and again that arming Dustoff crews was a practical approach to a life and death situation.
27:41Even when crews were armed, though, there was often little they could do to defend against the perfectly timed ambushes of a well-concealed enemy, a situation Major Pat Brady once encountered as he settled in for a routine pickup.
27:58We were called into a secure area, came in over the trees, sat down in the area, and two NVA or VC came up out of spider traps and shot both my crew members right in the door.
28:13And the one crew member is hanging in his harness and I was sure he was dead and the other one was shot in the back.
28:19And this guy, a kid named Steve Hook, a marvelous medic, as I look back, he's crawling through the stacks of patients, trying to start IVs, stop the bleeding, establish airways to see that people are going to make it for that 15 or 20 minutes.
28:35But he shot in the back and he's bleeding. And I'm afraid he's going to bleed out.
28:40And so I grabbed one of the patients and I pointed to his back and to his first aid pouch.
28:47And so he took out his pouch. While Hook is treating the patient, this guy was treating Hook.
28:56By 1968, Dustoff crews knew that they were flying the most dangerous missions in all of South Vietnam.
29:02Despite the tremendous risk the men faced, they forged ahead with a sense of purpose that astonished many and earned them heartfelt respect and admiration from allied forces and civilians throughout the country.
29:17The tradition and mystique that men like Major Charles Kelly had started continued to deepen until it became an obsession that drove hundreds of pilots to perform thousands of miraculous feats.
29:29Many more crews would die in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam.
29:36But theirs was a noble cause. One that was worth fighting and potentially dying for.
29:45Kelly's doctrine for Dustoff said it all. No compromise. No rationalization. No hesitation. Fly the mission. Now.
29:57The thing you feared most was that you weren't going to be able to get the guy out.
30:03That somehow or another you couldn't get through the weather. Somehow or another you couldn't get into the area.
30:10Somehow or another the enemy action would stop you. Something.
30:14Once you got the patient on board then you just take a sigh of relief and now it's just a matter of minutes before he's in the hands of a physician and he's going to live.
30:28To be continued...
30:29Throughout 1968 the number of Dustoff missions increased dramatically.
30:46In just 12 days during the communists January 10 offensive, crews evacuated over 8,000 patients with only 64 helicopters, 40 of which were hit by enemy fire.
31:01By year's end more than 200,000 wounded were recovered.
31:05Dustoff's commitment to recovering the wounded as fast as possible drove crews to log incredible flight hours despite limited resources and personnel.
31:14Generally speaking our shifts were 12 hours.
31:19And it was conceivable that you would be flying almost all the time that you were on duty.
31:25It's one mission after another and you don't shut down.
31:28You refuel hot and then you say nurses for God's sakes give us some chocolate chip cookies or some chocolate milk which was a good great thing over there.
31:36Or a sandwich or something and they would run out and stick a sandwich in the window as you dropped off the patients and went back out on the next mission.
31:47Dustoff's ability to continue operating at such a pace was dependent on the skill and dedication of each team's crew chief.
31:55Damage from enemy fire and the strain of constant flying took a serious toll on Dustoff Hueys.
32:01Overall, the cumulative stress of such frantic operations had a tremendous impact on the entire crew.
32:11The constant vibration, deafening noise and intense concentration associated with helicopter operations led the Army to formally restrict pilots to four hours of flight time per day.
32:23For many in the Dustoff community though, the idea of restricting flight time as a safety precaution when there were men in the field who desperately needed their help simply seemed absurd.
32:36They tried to stop us in Kelly's time because the standard was like 90 hours a month.
32:43And Kelly said, what do you want me to do when my pilots reach 90 hours in a month?
32:48We just leave the guy in the field? What are we going to do? 90 hours in a month is nothing.
32:53We just ignored that. We flew until we got through.
32:56Dustoff was frequently swamped with frantic calls for medical evacuation during major actions.
33:07To keep pace, multiple pickups were often made during a single mission.
33:13The size and strength of later model Hueys allowed crews to load up to six patients on hanging litters or nine without.
33:21In desperation though, crews often loaded on a dozen or more men in an effort to recover and stabilize as many as they could, as fast as they could.
33:36In a combat situation, we never put the patient on a litter.
33:41And I don't care how bad a guy is unless it's a head or a neck injury, something like that.
33:46And unless you've got time, there was no need to put him on there.
33:50You're going to have him in an operating room in 15 or 20 minutes.
33:53That's the important thing, not to take time to load a litter.
33:57You wanted to get as many as you could and as few trips as possible.
34:05The speed of recovery meant the difference between life and death for thousands of wounded.
34:09More than 97% of all patients airlifted from combat survived.
34:16The race to recover the wounded was fueled by an ever-present fear that the crew wouldn't make it in time.
34:23No words could describe the agony of descending into a pickup area where men were standing motionless by wounded comrades and realizing that it was too late.
34:35Such fears drove crews to take extraordinary risks to make combat pickups.
34:41Over time, dust-off pilots developed their own encyclopedia of combat flight tactics.
34:48Clever tricks of the trade that were instinctively devised in the heat of battle by men like Major Patrick Brady and then passed on to future crews.
34:56One day we got a mission, and it's out in a valley, and they had a bunch of casualties there.
35:05And the VC were mortaring the people on the ground, and they clearly had the strip zeroed in.
35:13So I says, all right, you put the patients at the north end of the strip, have them all ready to get on the aircraft as soon as I land.
35:21But I'm going to land at the south end of the strip.
35:25So I landed on the south end of the strip, and I sat there as long as I could stand it, figuring how long it takes the guy to get the mortar set up, zeroed in, and then zipped.
35:36We scooted towards the other end of the strip, got the patients on, and got out.
35:40Statistics for 1969 reflect the incredible pace of evacuation operations, and the skill, courage, and stamina of dust-off crews.
35:54In all, more than 241,000 wounded were evacuated during some 120,000 missions.
36:05During one long day, Chief Warrant Officer Mike Novosel and his crew managed to evacuate 66 Americans from the 1st Infantry Division who had been caught in a bloody ambush.
36:16On another afternoon, despite having already flown for seven hours, his crew managed to extract 29 severely wounded Vietnamese troops while under heavy fire, a mission for which Novosel was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
36:34During one rescue attempt, his radios and instruments were shot out, and on the last pickup, Novosel himself was wounded.
36:44Such a frantic race for life left little time for crews to properly prepare for the next mission, let alone to contemplate the brutality of what they faced each day.
36:56More than once I had my helicopter deck awash in blood, and I didn't have the time to wash it off.
37:07If I'd have wasted that time to wash it off, someone else would have died, and that's the hard part.
37:16That's the hard part.
37:35Of all the forces who served in Vietnam, none bore witness to more of the war's brutality than the medics and crew chiefs of Dustoff.
37:43The pace of operations, the wide variety and severity of injuries, and the volume of patients were perhaps the most demanding in the history of combat medicine.
37:53It took a special breed of men to face the kind of carnage that Dustoff medics were confronted with each and every day.
38:00The medic was a unique medic. This guy had to have immediate life saving skills. He dealt all day with traumatic injuries, amputations, head, neck, chest wounds, very serious mutilation of the human body.
38:17Medics and crew chiefs had to be prepared for the very worst, each time they set off on a mission.
38:24Regardless of what information the crew received in advance of entering a pickup area, the situation on the ground was usually very different, and in many cases, much worse.
38:42Dustoff choppers were frequently called into areas where firefights still raged.
38:49Specifics regarding the wounded were often unavailable until the men were actually on the ground.
38:59You're aware of approximate number of casualties. Outside of that, it was generally a surprise. It was like walking up to a buffet. You got wounded from A to Z, so you had no idea what to prepare for.
39:18The rapid response of Dustoff crews and the severity of injuries produced by unconventional warfare posed tremendous challenges for Dustoff.
39:30Many recently recruited medics had only received cursory training in traditional combat medicine.
39:37At times, even the most seasoned Dustoff medics were hard pressed to effectively treat those who had recently been maimed in combat or by lethal Viet Cong booby traps.
39:49We were picking up people who were freshly shot, whereas in Korea, these people were probably dead by the time the helicopter got there.
39:58But now the helicopter's picking them up minutes after they were shot, minutes after the mine went off and half of their face is missing.
40:08And so consequently, the medic on the helicopter was faced with casualties that the training wasn't aware of.
40:19Combat triage was extremely stressful for Dustoff medics.
40:27When there were more casualties than space would allow, decisions about who could be saved, who could wait, and who would not make it, had to be made as fast as possible.
40:37Every second counted, not only for the seriously wounded, but for the rest of the crew, who became prime targets for enemy gunners as they sat idle in the LZ.
40:56Once on board, the medic and the crew chief continued the struggle to assign priorities and to stabilize all of the wounded.
41:03Cramped quarters, the anxiety of patients, and the wide variety of wounds complicated the triage process immensely.
41:11Incorrect assumptions about the severity of a man's condition could easily lead to a death that could have been prevented.
41:26There would be people that just had this small little hole, didn't even bleed.
41:32In a combat situation, medics rarely had the luxury of properly treating and dressing wounds.
41:52Instead, they often had to resort to crude but effective measures, literally keeping people alive with their bare hands until the crew was out of danger.
42:02If you were getting shot at, you didn't have time to worry about, do you have enough equipment, you hold the bleeding, you style the bleeding, you might not have gloves, you might not have anything, just grab the wound with your hands and hold it until you could get out of the area and then do something about, you know, whether you clamped or put pressure dressings on or whatever.
42:23Dustoff evacuation was not reserved just for American forces.
42:30In fact, crews evacuated thousands of friendly troops, Vietnamese civilians, and even wounded Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners.
42:39Security for the evacuation of enemy forces was always a paramount concern.
42:49Nonetheless, Dustoff crews made every effort to treat wounded enemy troops with the same determination that they would wounded Americans, keeping with a long tradition of medical personnel to sustain all life, whether friend or foe.
43:04If I had a Viet Cong who was in very sad shape and a friendly who just had a minor flesh wound, I'd take care of the more severe injury first.
43:16To me, I didn't really care if they were white skin or yellow skin or what color flag they fought under.
43:24Once they're in my care, a patient is a patient and I don't worry about politics, race, religion or any of that stuff. A patient is a patient.
43:31It is hard to comprehend what the Dustoff medic and indeed the entire crew confronted on a daily basis.
43:40Combat operations in Vietnam often instilled horrific images of pain and suffering in the minds of those who witnessed them.
43:49Perhaps nowhere were these images as graphic nor as incessant as they were for the crews of Dustoff.
43:56There are some bizarre things that you see that land in a field and the mortars start landing in and you see a guy half blowing up still take a couple of steps.
44:09And you're saying you're coming. This isn't really happening.
44:21Repeated exposure to such carnage could have an extremely traumatic impact on Dustoff crews.
44:29Yet most crewmen were able to persevere. They knew that the lives of literally thousands of young men hung in the balance of their ability to remain calm and to administer the very best care that they could under the circumstances.
44:43And every day you see traumatic amputations, sucking chest wounds, bullet wounds, severe head wounds,
45:11where part of the brain is coming out. When you see this on an almost daily basis, it has that effect that you get to expect that that's what you're going to see.
45:22And if you allow it to bother you, you're in the wrong business. You better move somewhere else because you're not going to be very good.
45:30You have to take it and you have to accept it as a course of life at that point.
45:36The pilots, medics and crew chiefs that served on board Dustoff choppers had all volunteered to be assigned to their units.
45:51Many not only finished their initial assignments, but volunteered to stay on for multiple tours.
45:57For some, though, the incredible stress of Dustoff operations eventually became too much.
46:04When it did, there was an unspoken bond among all crews that reflected both the admirable contribution that had been made and the painful trials that were endured by all.
46:16We had people who would just quit. And we never said anything about it. You know, there was no disgrace attached to it. There was no humility attached to it.
46:28We saw the human body in every possible configuration. Thousands and thousands of dead.
46:35You would never force a guy to do the kind of work we did.
46:53From 1962 until the end of American involvement in 1973, Dustoff crews evacuated more than 900,000 patients to various medical facilities throughout Vietnam.
47:08The vast majority of patients arrived less than an hour after they were wounded, and more than 97% ultimately survived.
47:19Much of the credit for such a low mortality rate belongs to the surgeons and staff of evacuation hospitals that often performed medical miracles.
47:30But before the wounded could be saved, there had to be men brave enough to go and get them.
47:37Roughly one-third of all Dustoff pilots became casualties in their efforts to recover the wounded.
47:43In all, 297 crewmen were killed, hundreds more were wounded, and nearly 200 helicopters were lost in action.
47:52While some questioned Dustoff's willingness to put their own lives on the line for the wounded, most crews couldn't fathom performing their missions in any other way.
48:02When it comes to the bottom line of whether you risk it, you and your helicopter for the wounded, war is a risky business.
48:11This guy down there has risked himself. Why in the hell wouldn't you risk yourself?
48:15People I know would certainly not have survived if we hadn't been there, that we know.
48:23And when it was all over, there is a great feeling that it's almost a high that you know, man, I have saved somebody today.
48:34The Grim Reaper was watching me, but I fooled him.
48:40No words or statistics can ever really capture the contributions and sacrifices of Dustoff in Vietnam.
48:49In the end, the only legacy worthy of their achievements is a living legacy.
48:57The gratitude of thousands of men like pilot John Gavan, who never would have made it home alive without the immediate care he received from a Dustoff crew.
49:08These are the most selfless people in the world.
49:15They would give their life for a wounded American or Vietnamese without a second thought.
49:24That you are the most selfless people in the world.
49:27To be continued...
49:31We will want your followers to a США.
49:36We will come to you in the world.
49:39We will go to yourنا and see each other's lives in a capacity.
49:43We will be here in the world.
49:45The most selfless people in the world of Greensboro, in the world of Neal,
49:49Transcription by CastingWords