Crazy night…big thunderstorm ~3 a.m. with 50+ mph winds and lots of lightning. Made for a restless night.
I was alerted for my air-evac sortie at 7:30 a.m. We all showed up just before 8 a.m. I met Lt. Col. Juliette Robinson…she’s the head AE nurse and would be my seeing-eye-officer to walk me through the mission and show me what our 379th Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron does. Juliette is a seasoned pro…before this deployment, she spent six months in Kandahar, Afghanistan, with the U.S. Army, Afghan National Army and Canadian forces. Our AE crew today consisted of two exceptional nurses, Capt. Danette Butler and Capt. Vickey Shelton, along with three amazing medical technicians: SMSgt Justin King, TSgt Michael Park and SrA Crystal Tucker. This whole crew is from the Oklahoma Air National Guard, and they are exceptional at their job. We got our intel brief and followed that with a thorough brief on each patient’s specific condition and needs. We were also lucky to have on our crew today the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command flight surgeon, COL Rusty Farr. Talk about experience…Rusty has served for more than 42 years! The AE community is really close knit…when you are around them it’s like family…more on that later.
Today was a “Mercy” mission…planned for six stops in Iraq to pick up ~17 patients…one urgent, one battle injury, two on litters and the rest ambulatory…the injuries ran the gamut from head injuries to broken bones to psychological issues. We’d be stopping at Basrah, Tallil, al Kut, Baghdad, al Asad and Balad before returning home.
We got out to the C-130 about 9:30 a.m…there is a lot of AE-specific gear to load…the AE support team turns a normal C-130 into a flying hospital capable of taking care of the most seriously injured patients. Even though it was before 10 a.m., it was really hot and humid due to the previous night’s thunderstorm…so before we finished loading the AE gear, the whole AE crew was dripping wet with sweat. We are flying with an Air Force Reserve Command crew out of Pittsburgh, Pa. The aircraft commander is Capt. Lance Hupp. His co-pilot is 1Lt. Chris Farley. The navigator is Lt. Col. Bryan Branby. [The Flight Engineer is TSgt Vince Barnes and] The two sterling loadmasters are MSgt Dave Robbins and MSgt Dave Caldwell. It’s a great crew…with lots of experience. They’ve been flying four times per week all over the AOR for the last three months. Also joining our merry crowd today is a two-person Fly Away Security Team (FAST)…just after 10:30, our 15-person ops, AE and security team starts our mission. It’s been three hours since we were first alerted.
A little more than an hour after takeoff, we make our first stop at Basrah. We picked up one litter patient. On all the stops except one, we did Engine Running Onloads (EROs)…in short, we taxi in…the ramp is dropped…the plane stops…the ambulance shows up…and we load patients behind four running turboprop engines. It’s noisy and very windy. As soon as the patients are on board with the paperwork, we taxi to the runway, close the ramp and takeoff. At Basrah, the total time from landing, taxi in, patient on-load to takeoff was 15 minutes. The crew told me their best time was six minutes. Twenty minutes after wheels up from Basrah, we’re at Tallil. We repeat the process…adding four patients. Twenty minutes later, we’re at al Kut and add another patient. Forty-five minutes later we’re at Baghdad. Here we add nine patients…one on a litter, six ambulatory with two escorts. At Baghdad, we had some excitement. We shut down the engines to load up some gas…a few minutes later a mortar round was fired at the airfield. We heard the nearby blast and then the sirens started wailing and the loudspeakers told people to take cover. We ended up waiting a little while until the all-clear sounded and then took off for al Asad to pick up three more patients. At the end of the day, we had five more people than planned, to include an extra litter patient.
We landed at Balad…all the ambulances and buses were waiting and we were met by AE and hospital folks who would now care for these patients. Most of the patients will spend the night before heading on to Landstuhl, Germany.
I mentioned family. If you didn’t know better, you’d have thought when we landed at Balad that we were at a family reunion. Everyone high-fived each other and there were lots of hugs going around. ”See you next time. We’ve got it from here.” We spent less than an hour on the ground at Balad and departed just after sunset.
We loaded everyone back on the C-130 (plus an extra 16 passengers) and headed home. It took just less than three hours to get back home. When we landed, we unloaded all the AE gear and headed back through immigrations and customs to the squadron. I left the AE gang just before 11 p.m….for me it was a long 16-hour day…the AE folks were all ecstatic because the day had gone so smooth and quick that it was two hours shorter than normal.
The impression I was left with was “family.” The AE squadron is small and tight knit. They treat every patient like one of their family. How you feeling? Are you feeling any pain? Do you need some water? They have a really positive attitude…they kid and cut up with each other almost non-stop. They get the mission done and take extraordinary care of all our wounded warriors. I sure am glad they are on our team!
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