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00:00Among the millions of casualties produced in the Vietnam War, more than 900,000 survived their
00:09injuries thanks to the uncommon dedication and bravery of a relatively small group of
00:15men known as Dustoff. They flew the most dangerous missions in South Vietnam to
00:22evacuate wounded troops from the battlefield and to keep them alive long enough to receive
00:27more thorough medical care. This is the incredible story of the men who volunteered to fly those
00:34missions, the dangers they faced, sacrifices they made, pain they suffered, and the lives
00:41they saved.
00:57In Vietnam, all helicopter pilots followed one golden rule. Never fly over the same area
01:14twice, especially if you had come under fire the first time. That rule was especially true
01:20for landing zones, or LZs, where enemy troops routinely ambushed vulnerable chopper crews.
01:27On April 12, 1964, that rule was defied, with tragic consequences for a young H-21 pilot named
01:36John Gevan. That day, Lieutenant Gevan was transporting a load of South Vietnamese troops to a district
01:43capital that had been taken over by communist Viet Cong forces. As soon as the troops had been
01:50offloaded, the empty transports struggled to regain altitude, but then spun around and flew
01:56directly across the LZ.
01:58The fire directed on us by the VC was overwhelming. You could hear it, it just like popcorn machines going off everywhere.
02:10At about the time the altimeter read 400 feet, I thought, this is too good to be true. We might make it.
02:20Well, just a few seconds after that, literally, everything from just about right here below my knee
02:27was in little bitty pieces of meat, bone, and blood dripping from the top of the cockpit.
02:35Gevan was rushed to a nearby staging area in a dust-off chopper piloted by Major Charles Kelly.
02:42The crew was met by Captain James Ralph, a flight surgeon who recognized the severity of Gevan's condition
02:48and immediately began treating his wounds. This footage was taken as the men frantically prepared
02:54to evacuate Gevan to Saigon.
02:57The artery had retracted up into his thigh. There's no way I could get to it, nothing I could clamp,
03:03so I had to pack several gauze dressings in there and just hold them with my thumbs.
03:07We took off, went to altitude, and he passed out. He was kind of in and out of it anyway,
03:13but he just went from white to gray at that point. I told the pilot we've got to stay at treetop level.
03:19The pilot, Major Kelly, descended to preserve what little oxygen flow remained in Gevan's bloodstream.
03:29The entire crew was now at risk of coming under fire from enemy gunners.
03:35Gevan had a slim chance of surviving, but only if his condition could be stabilized
03:40and if he could receive thorough trauma care within minutes.
03:45In a desperate attempt to reduce blood loss, Captain Ralph continued to grasp Gevan's open wound
03:51until he was in surgery.
03:56He was the closest to dying of anyone I took care of in Vietnam. He was worse than pale.
04:02He was turning gray. He had no pulse that you could feel.
04:08Unfortunately, the damage to the lower portion of Gevan's right leg was beyond repair.
04:15But thanks to the incredible skill and courage of a dust-off crew
04:19and the extraordinary efforts of the surgeons and medical staff that attended to his wounds,
04:24Gevan's life was saved.
04:29During the Korean War, the air ambulance concept was a proven success,
04:34and the dust-off helicopter, the Bell UH-1 Huey, was designed especially for medical evacuation.
04:41But there was a time when these dedicated dust-off helicopters in Vietnam were almost grounded.
04:47That was before Major Charles Kelly, the pilot who evacuated Lieutenant Gevan, arrived in country in January of 1964.
04:58Kelly was the third commander of the 57th Medical Detachment,
05:02a small field evacuation unit that was sent to Vietnam in early 1962.
05:13When he took command, the unit was virtually under siege by senior-level brass.
05:18They thought that a dedicated unit of air ambulances was a waste of a most precious commodity, helicopters.
05:26Kelly's first order of business was to confront the unit's detractors and to prove them wrong.
05:32Kelly came back to us and he said, let me tell you something.
05:35They don't wish us well. They want our aircraft.
05:38So the only way we're going to keep them is to prove that nobody else can do what we do better than we do.
05:53The 57th had amassed an impressive record of evacuations, despite numerous political and operational obstacles.
06:01But Kelly instilled a new sense of urgency in crews and made several dramatic operational changes.
06:09First, Kelly taught his crews never to refuse a mission, never to come home without the patient,
06:16and always to put the safety of the wounded first.
06:24He then split the detachment and relocated two of the choppers to Sok Trang,
06:29in the middle of Vietnam's expansive delta, where Viet Cong activity was rapidly increasing.
06:35Radio communication was extremely unreliable, so Kelly directed his crews not just to wait for evacuation requests,
06:43but to actually seek out new business.
06:45In an extremely bold move, Kelly himself also began flying at night.
06:55Each evening, he set off on a 400-mile circuit to recover wounded troops and civilians that he knew would be out there.
07:03Frequently, he arrived home in a chopper that was full of holes and spurting gas.
07:08Most pilots were soon flying more than 150 hours a month, even though they were supposed to be grounded if they flew more than 100.
07:20The value and appreciation of dust-off crews grew immensely under Kelly's command.
07:25Dust-off came to represent a ray of humanity and hope in an increasingly brutal and inhumane conflict.
07:34They set a standard that would be hard to match in anybody's war.
07:41It gave us a very strong feeling of security knowing those medevac guys would be in there to get us.
07:52We loved them to death.
07:54And we knew particularly that Major Charles L. Kelly would be there.
07:57People appreciated him very much because they didn't have to wait till morning to get their people out.
08:06And they knew he would come anytime, day or night, whatever the weather was.
08:09They didn't have to wait.
08:11And that's a great thing for a person to know if there's somebody next to you that's hurt.
08:18In a letter to the U.S. Surgeon General, Kelly described the commitment of dust-off crews to their cause.
08:23Our job is evacuation of casualties from the battlefield, he wrote.
08:29This we are doing day and night, without escort aircraft and with only one ship for each mission.
08:36The other units fly in groups, rarely at night, and are always heavily armed.
08:44The strength of Kelly's determination to keep dust-off in the air and his dedication to the wounded on the ground were clear in the daring way he flew.
08:54This was the case on July 1st, 1964, when a call for dust-off came from a unit near Vin Long.
09:08Approaching the area, Kelly radioed the men on the ground and asked them to mark their position with smoke.
09:13As he neared the ground, enemy forces turned their weapons on the large, vulnerable Huey.
09:23The advisors on the ground frantically radioed Kelly, warning him to get out of the area as fast as possible.
09:29When I have your wounded, he answered.
09:30When I have your wounded, he answered.
09:34Suddenly, Kelly's Huey pitched upwards, nosed over and plunged to the earth, the rotors beating into the ground.
09:48My God, he whispered, as a bullet entered an open cargo door and pierced his heart.
10:06Major Charles L. Kelly was the 49th American to die in Vietnam, but his legacy would live on for years to come.
10:22Major Charles L. Kelly did not die in vain.
10:32At the time of his death, roughly 18,000 U.S. troops were stationed in Vietnam.
10:37By the end of 1966, nearly 400,000 American troops were stationed throughout the country, and the conflict was becoming increasingly bloody.
10:50Ultimately, millions of military and civilian personnel would be wounded or killed in a bitter struggle that would last more than a decade.
10:58Major 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.
11:10His legacy for the conduct of Dustoff operations could be summed up by some of the last words he spoke.
11:17When I have your wounded, a motto that men like Major Patrick Brady, one of two Dustoff pilots to receive the Medal of Honor, took to heart.
11:29Raider Alpha-6, Raider Alpha-6, long mid-Dustoff.
11:32The Operation Shack would get the mission.
11:35Well, as soon as the guy came on the radio Dustoff, have a mission ready to copy, he'd hit the buzzer.
11:42And that alerted the crew.
11:43And immediately, the co-pilot would head for the aircraft.
11:46The pilot would head for the Operation Shack.
11:49And you didn't walk, you ran.
11:52And the first thing you wanted was the coordinates and the heading.
11:55And with those two bits of information, he would run to the aircraft, which would already be running.
12:01The co-pilot was started.
12:02Everything was ready to go.
12:04You're off the ground before three minutes.
12:06And you call the guy on the ground right now, as soon as you break ground, because then he stops keeping time.
12:13He knows you're on the way.
12:14He then is relieved.
12:15Initially, Dustoff pilots essentially abandoned conventional combat flight precautions in an effort to get to the wounded as fast as possible.
12:32Even 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.
12:43The only intelligence that we had was that which we found out along the way.
12:49We had no intelligence briefing.
12:52There wasn't time for an intelligence briefing.
12:55There wasn't time for flight planning.
13:00In the absence of intelligence about enemy threats, pilots developed their own set of defensive flight tactics.
13:06Many preferred to fly at treetop level en route to the pickup area.
13:10This prevented enemy gunners from finding their mark.
13:17Dustoff 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.
13:28In time, the situation improved slightly.
13:32Crews began receiving what became known as the essential elements of information.
13:36We 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.
13:53All these kinds of things that are nice to know if you are a pilot.
13:57Although 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.
14:15One 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.
14:25Often times, the guy on the ground didn't know where he was.
14:30And he'd give you a set of coordinates that, you know, you get there, he is nobody there.
14:36While crews could usually pinpoint the location of troops by homing in on their radio signal, there were other more significant problems.
14:46One of the most difficult involved the prioritization of patients.
14:53Various 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.
15:03In reality, though, many patients drew urgent classifications based on their pain rather than on the severity of their condition.
15:12Ground commanders were anxious to see that any wounded man was taken out as soon as possible.
15:18This often limited dustoff's ability to evacuate those who needed help most.
15:22It made no sense at all.
15:26You know, you could have both legs blown off and not necessarily be urgent because your limbs are gone already.
15:32And if you're stable, you live for a long time.
15:34So I said there are two kinds of patients, an urgent patient and a non-urgent patient.
15:39Now, if you've got them day or night, we're going to come and get them right now.
15:45But 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.
16:07Ground 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.
16:18But every crew knew that ground forces were hard pressed to assess the relative security of any area.
16:25They also knew that enemy troops often laid in wait to ambush dustoff choppers that were sure to come for the wounded.
16:32Most crews simply prepared for the worst while maintaining a firm sense of resolve to get in and out regardless of the danger.
16:43Security of an area made no sense at all.
16:47Somebody had shot those guys you were going to go get and he had been shot just a few minutes before.
16:52And that's why you were going in there.
16:55For some guy on the ground to be forced to tell you it's secure or insecure was an unfair burden on that guy.
17:02He wanted him out and he wanted him out now.
17:05And who in the hell are we to say that we can't go into an insecure area when those guys live in insecure areas?
17:10While 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.
17:29The 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.
17:47All 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.
18:03I 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.
18:17And 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, you know, you understand that.
18:30And after a while, you sort of accept this.
18:34They will lie to you, as would I, to get you to come for their wounded buddy.
18:39And 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.
18:47So I said, don't talk to me about security. Here's all I ask.
18:52If you will stand up when we land and help us load the patient, I'll come in.
19:00Just give me a break on location and weaponry of the enemy.
19:05I'm going to turn my tail into the fire.
19:07Get him on as quick as you can so we can get out with everybody alive.
19:13Helicopter operations in Vietnam were notoriously demanding.
19:30Flight crews were confronted with virtually every type of terrain imaginable.
19:35Landing zones or LZs were often nothing more than small clearings carved out of the jungle.
19:47Merely bringing a chopper into a low hover in the rough, unforgiving terrain taxed even the most accomplished pilots.
19:54To make matters worse, enemy forces frequently booby-trapped potential LZs or set up deadly ambushes.
20:04Dustoff pilots faced even worse conditions than most crews.
20:08When called in to recover wounded troops, they usually flew into an area where enemy forces were nearby.
20:14And often, the unit they were coming to help was still involved in active combat.
20:19As a result, the entire Dustoff crew had to be prepared for virtually any contingency as they approached a pickup area.
20:27Dustoff 74, this is Matthew 65, go.
20:30Dustoff 74, we're approaching your area from the north at this time.
20:34Pop your smoke at this time. What's your recommended approach into the area and what is your security?
20:39Roger, we are popping smoke at this time. Recommended direction of approach is from north to south.
20:45Tactical situation and the area is secure.
20:49One of the things we learned early on was that the enemy listened to us on the frequency.
20:54We had only one frequency that we all used. It was dedicated to medical evacuation.
20:59And the guy on the ground would say, Dustoff, I'm popping yellow smoke.
21:03And then there would be four or five yellow smokes down there.
21:06So, we got smart and we said, all right, you pop your smoke and I will identify it.
21:18Dustoff 74, I understand approach from north to south. I have green smoke.
21:23Uh, roger, that's affirmative. We have green smoke and your direction approaches, I'm fine.
21:28Dustoff 74, I'm on final approach at this time. Let him know.
21:32Roger, we have someone out there to guide you in.
21:3574.
21:36Okay, lock and load, we're on final approach at this time.
21:41Pick up the hedgerows on the left and right.
21:44Here he is, secure. We'll go in as the security is not secure.
21:48Pick up the hedgerows left and right, final approach.
21:51Every evacuation attempt was filled with uncertainty and danger.
22:00Ground troops frequently had to carry their wounded a considerable distance over rugged terrain
22:07until they could find a large enough clearing for Dustoff's chopper.
22:11Each clearing was different and posed dozens of new and unique threats.
22:16It was the aircraft commander's job to negotiate these ever-changing risks.
22:23In 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.
22:35As I learned to analyze the terrain, the aircraft capabilities, the enemy location, friendly location, the weaponry that we were up against.
22:45If 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.
22:54Helicopter crews were usually ambushed when they were most vulnerable, when they were just settling into a hover or were resting on the ground.
23:09Once in the landing zone, the key to safety was speed and the key to speed was teamwork.
23:19The crew chief and the medic quickly loaded or supervised the loading of patients while the pilot waited for the signal to take off.
23:26Every second counted.
23:29We tried to rely on speed so that we would minimize our time within the range of the enemy.
23:36And 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.
23:43You were not flying anymore, not until all the wounded were placed on board.
23:48And 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.
24:05While 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.
24:16To recover patients in rough or waterlogged terrain, the pilot came into a hover directly above the wounded.
24:23The crew then lowered a 250-foot cable from a hoist powered by an electric winch.
24:33If the patient was seriously wounded, he was placed in a Stokes rigid litter so that he could gently be raised to the crew.
24:40In a combat zone, nothing is more vulnerable than a helicopter maintaining a high hover.
24:48No matter what happened, the crew had to hold that hover until the patient was safely on board.
24:54It was often impossible to lower a litter because of dense jungle foliage.
25:01To 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.
25:12It took everyone in the crew to perform these hazardous missions.
25:20One false move could result in tragedy for the patient, the crew, and even the troops below.
25:26Most 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 where you would lower a jungle penetrator or a Stokes litter or something like that where they could then load the patient on.
25:47You pull him up through the trees without hooking him on trees.
25:50I 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.
26:06In 1967, Dustoff evacuated almost 1,400 patients on hoist missions.
26:13Nearly 100,000 wounded were evacuated overall, but success came with a high price.
26:20That same year, 40 crewmen were killed, 58 were wounded, and 24 helicopters, clearly marked with big red crosses, were lost in action.
26:32According to terms established by the Geneva Convention, medical evacuation helicopters were not to carry arms or to engage in combat.
26:41But these terms also stipulated that medical evacuation personnel were not to be fired upon.
26:48In Vietnam, both of these mandates were often ignored.
26:53In some cases, formal defensive measures were taken to protect crews, such as adding door gunners and requesting gunship escorts.
27:01I 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.
27:16So they had to have a side arm for protection.
27:20The 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.
27:30Even 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.
27:47We 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.
28:02And 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.
28:08And 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.
28:23But he shot in the back, and he's bleeding, and I'm afraid he's going to bleed out.
28:30And so I grabbed one of the patients, and I pointed to his back and to his first aid pouch, and so he took out his pouch.
28:39While Hook is treating the patient, this guy was treating Hook.
28:45By 1968, Dustoff crews knew that they were flying the most dangerous missions in all of South Vietnam.
28:53Despite 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.
29:06The 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.
29:18Many more crews would die in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam, but theirs was a noble cause, one that was worth fighting and potentially dying for.
29:31Kelly's doctrine for Dustoff said it all. No compromise. No rationalization. No hesitation. Fly the mission. Now.
29:46The thing you feared most was that you weren't going to be able to get the guy out.
29:52That somehow or another you couldn't get through the weather. Somehow or another you couldn't get into the area.
29:59Somehow or another the enemy action would stop you. Something.
30:03Once you got the patient on board then you just take a sigh of relief and now just a matter of minutes before he's in the hands of a physician and he's going to live.
30:14You're going to live.
30:30Throughout 1968 the number of Dustoff missions increased dramatically.
30:34In 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.
30:50By year's end more than 200,000 wounded were recovered.
30:54Dustoff's commitment to recovering the wounded as fast as possible drove crews to log incredible flight hours despite limited resources and personnel.
31:05Generally speaking our shifts were 12 hours and it was conceivable that you would be flying almost all the time that you were on duty.
31:14It's one mission after another and you don't you don't shut down.
31:18You 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 and or 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.
31:34Dustoff's ability to continue operating at such a pace was dependent on the skill and dedication of each team's crew chief.
31:44Damage from enemy fire and the strain of constant flying took a serious toll on Dustoff Hueys.
31:50Overall, the cumulative stress of such frantic operations had a tremendous impact on the entire crew.
32:00The 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.
32:12For 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.
32:26They tried to stop us in Kelly's time because the standard was like 90 hours a month.
32:33And Kelly said, what do you want me to do when my pilots reach 90 hours in a month?
32:38We just leave the guy in the field? What are we going to do? 90 hours in a month is nothing.
32:42We just ignored that. We flew until we got through.
32:50Dustoff was frequently swamped with frantic calls from medical evacuation during major actions.
32:57To keep pace, multiple pickups were often made during a single mission.
33:01The size and strength of later model Hueys allowed crews to load up to six patients on hanging litters or nine without.
33:11In 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.
33:20In a combat situation, we never put the patient on a litter.
33:30And I don't care how bad a guy is, unless it's a head or a neck injury, something like that.
33:35And unless you've got time, there was no need to put them on there.
33:39You're going to have him in an operating room in 15 or 20 minutes.
33:42That's the important thing, not to take time to load a litter.
33:47You wanted to get as many as you could and as few trips as possible.
33:55The speed of recovery meant the difference between life and death for thousands of wounded.
34:00More than 97% of all patients airlifted from combat survived.
34:05The race to recover the wounded was fueled by an ever present fear that the crew wouldn't make it in time.
34:15No 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.
34:25Such fears drove crews to take extraordinary risks to make combat pickups.
34:30Over time, dust-off pilots developed their own encyclopedia of combat flight tactics.
34:37Clever 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.
34:47One day we got a mission and it's out in a valley.
34:52And they had a bunch of casualties there.
34:54And the VC were mortaring the people on the ground.
34:59And they clearly had the strip zeroed in.
35:03So I said, 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.
35:12But I'm going to land at the south end of the strip.
35:14So I landed on the south end of the strip and I sat there as long as I could stand it.
35:20Figuring how long it takes the guy to get the mortar set up, zeroed in, and then zipped.
35:25We scooted towards the other end of the strip, got the patients on and got out.
35:29Statistics for 1969 reflect the incredible pace of evacuation operations and the skill, courage, and stamina of dust-off crews.
35:43In all, more than 241,000 wounded were evacuated during some 120,000 missions.
35:55During 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.
36:06On another afternoon, despite having already flown for seven hours, his crew managed to extract 29 severely wounded Vietnamese troops while under heavy fire.
36:20A mission for which Novosel was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
36:24During one rescue attempt, his radios and instruments were shot out, and on the last pickup, Novosel himself was wounded.
36:36Such 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.
36:49More than once, I had my helicopter deck awash in blood.
36:53And I didn't have the time to wash it off.
36:57If I'd have wasted that time to wash it off, someone else would have died.
37:00And that's, that's, that's the hard part.
37:06Of 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.
37:20The 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.
37:38It took a special breed of men to face the kind of carnage that Dustoff medics were confronted with each and every day.
37:48The medic was a unique medic.
37:52This guy had to have immediate life saving skills.
37:56He dealt all day with traumatic injuries, amputations, head, neck, chest wounds, very serious mutilation of the human body.
38:06Medics and crew chiefs had to be prepared for the very worst each time they set off on a mission.
38:23Regardless 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.
38:34Dustoff choppers were frequently called into areas where firefights still raged.
38:44Specifics regarding the wounded were often unavailable until the men were actually on the ground.
38:53You're aware of approximate number of casualties.
38:57Outside of that, it was generally a surprise.
39:00It was like walking up to a buffet.
39:03You got wounded from A to Z, so you had no idea what to prepare for.
39:10The rapid response of Dustoff crews and the severity of injuries produced by unconventional warfare posed tremendous challenges for Dustoff.
39:18Many recently recruited medics had only received cursory training in traditional combat medicine.
39:25At 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.
39:36We were picking up people who were just freshly shot, whereas in Korea, these people were probably dead by the time the helicopter got there.
39:46But 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.
39:56And so consequently, the medic on the helicopter was faced with casualties that the training wasn't aware of.
40:06Combat triage was extremely stressful for Dustoff medics.
40:17When 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.
40:26Every 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.
40:45Once on board, the medic and the crew chief continued the struggle to assign priorities and to stabilize all of the wounded.
40:51Cramped quarters, the anxiety of patients, and the wide variety of wounds complicated the triage process immensely.
41:08Incorrect assumptions about the severity of a man's condition could easily lead to a death that could have been prevented.
41:15There would be people that just had this small little hole, didn't even bleed.
41:22And yet, the man was dead, and here's this person that was half the chest blown up, and this guy would hang on and live and come walk right out.
41:33In a combat situation, medics rarely had the luxury of properly treating and dressing wounds.
41:42Instead, 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.
41:51If we 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.
42:12Dust-off evacuation was not reserved just for American forces.
42:19In fact, crews evacuated thousands of friendly troops, Vietnamese civilians, and even wounded Viet Cong and North Vietnamese prisoners.
42:34Security for the evacuation of enemy forces was always a paramount concern.
42:39Nonetheless, Dust-off 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.
42:55If 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.
43:06To me, I didn't really care if they were white skin or yellow skin or what color flag they fought under.
43:13Once 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.
43:20It is hard to comprehend what the Dust-off medic, and indeed the entire crew, confronted on a daily basis.
43:29Combat operations in Vietnam often instilled horrific images of pain and suffering in the minds of those who witnessed them.
43:38Perhaps nowhere were these images as graphic nor as incessant as they were for the crews of Dust-off.
43:45There 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.
43:58And you're saying, here comes, this isn't really happening.
44:02Repeated exposure to such carnage could have an extremely traumatic impact on Dust-off crews.
44:19Yet most crewmen were able to persevere.
44:21They 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.
44:36When every day you see traumatic amputations, sucking chest wounds, bullet wounds, severe head wounds where part of the brain is coming out.
45:02When 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.
45:12And if you allow it to bother you, you're in the wrong business.
45:16You'd better move somewhere else because you're not going to be very good.
45:20You have to take it and you have to accept it as a course of life at that point.
45:33The pilots, medics, and crew chiefs that served on board Dust-off choppers had all volunteered to be assigned to their units.
45:40Many not only finished their initial assignments, but volunteered to stay on for multiple tours.
45:46For some though, the incredible stress of Dust-off operations eventually became too much.
45:53When 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.
46:05We had people who would just quit. And we never, never said anything about it.
46:14You know, there was no disgrace attached to it. There was no humility attached to it.
46:18We saw the human body in every possible configuration, thousands and thousands of dead.
46:24You would never force a guy to do the kind of work we did.
46:43From 1962 until the end of American involvement in 1973, Dust-off crews evacuated more than 900,000 patients to various medical facilities throughout Vietnam.
46:57The vast majority of patients arrived less than an hour after they were wounded, and more than 97% ultimately survived.
47:04Much of the credit for such a low mortality rate belongs to the surgeons and staff of evacuation hospitals that often performed medical miracles.
47:19But before the wounded could be saved, there had to be men brave enough to go and get them.
47:25Roughly one-third of all Dust-off pilots became casualties in their efforts to recover the wounded.
47:32In all, 297 crewmen were killed, hundreds more were wounded, and nearly 200 helicopters were lost in action.
47:41While some questioned Dust-off'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.
47:50When it comes to the bottom line of whether you risk it, you and your helicopter for the wounded, war is a risky business.
48:01This guy down there has risked himself. Why in the hell wouldn't you risk yourself?
48:05People I know would certainly not have survived if we hadn't been there, that we know.
48:12And 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.
48:24The Grim Reaper was watching me, but I fooled him.
48:31No words or statistics can ever really capture the contributions and sacrifices of Dust-off in Vietnam.
48:41In the end, the only legacy worthy of their achievements is a living legacy.
48:47The 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 Dust-off crew.
48:58These are the most selfless people in the world.
49:04They would give their life for a wounded American or Vietnamese without a second thought.
49:13The Grim Reaper
49:16The Grim Reaper
49:17The Grim Reaper
49:19THE END
49:49THE END