By Spc. Nathan Hoskins
1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs officer
CAMP TAJI, Iraq ó It doesn’t matter that the weather conditions have grounded every other aircraft around Baghdad. It doesn’t matter that there are hostile forces near the landing zone.
The 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division’s medical evacuation crews take off in their helicopters because they have a mission: to save a life.
The soldiers of Company C, 2nd Lobo Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, feel their job is worth the extra risks and effort to get up in the air, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jeremy Turner, a Medevac pilot for Co. C, who hails from Rockwell, N.C.
It wasn’t a particularly busy day on the airfield due to the weather when Co. C got a call recently. An improvised explosive device (IED) had seriously injured two soldiers, and someone needed to fly them out.
The soldiers are part of 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, a task force attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of North Carolina’s famed 82nd Airborne Division.
Just three days ago, the Medevac team members were stunned by the loss of one of their comrades, Sgt. William Brown, a Medevac crew chief killed during an indirect fire attack. Brown was tending to an aircraft when enemy fire came in, killing him instantly.
But the pilots and crew chiefs of Co. C shoulder their job with the loss of their friend still weighing on their hearts.
“The job has to get done. Brown is missed every day, but there are many more men and women out there like him that expect us to be there,” Turner said.
Even with the determination to fly into the unknown, some conditions are just too dangerous to go airborne.
This was one of those days … or was it?
Pilots normally require a minimum of three miles of visibility to take off. This day, Turner could see only about a half-mile because of a dense dust storm, which had grounded all Medevac birds from Balad to Kuwait.
Turner and his superiors discussed the situation, and finally, permission came all the way from the brigade commander.
Lt. Col. Christopher Joslin, the Lobo commander and a native of Reno, Nev., said Medevac team members have risked themselves day or night.
Miserable weather and hostile skies are not unusual for the Medevac teams, Turner said.
“That’s where soldiers usually get hurt,” he said. “It’s never on a sunny day, right by the beach. They’re out there doing the fighting. We’re there to try and make sure they make it back in from the fight, if we’re called,” he said.
Within minutes of getting the green light, Turner and his crew were on their way to the scene.
Give the crew members Superman capes ó they’re able to get their aircraft aloft in 10 minutes or less, Joslin said.
“Most aviators that fly UH-60 (Black Hawks) outside of the Medevac community doubt that is really possible,” Joslin said. “The only crews I have ever seen do that are Medevac crews and the chase crews that have been trained by Medevac crews.”
Ten minutes later, the Black Hawk was landing at its destination to pick up the wounded soldiers. Less than 10 minutes after that, the helicopter landed at the local Combat Support Hospital, Turner said.
One of the two soldiers required extensive surgery, but both survived thanks to the Medevac team’s timely response and selfless service, said Capt. Jared Purcell, public affairs officer for Task Force 1-26.
“During combat operations over the last year, Air Medevac units have risked their lives to save the lives of Task Force 1-26 soldiers,” he said.
“They move to the sound of the guns and do what it takes to get to the patient.”
The soldiers of Co. C see the bloodiest part of battle nearly every day. Even so, there has to be a release, a time to put it all away and focus on things a little less dark, said Turner, who was a Navy corpsman for 11 years before joining the Army as a Medevac pilot.
“I’ve, unfortunately, gotten hardened” to the sight of the injured and dead,” he said. “It still catches up and hurts every once in a while, but you just can’t dwell.”
Although this mission ended well, others don’t, Turner said.
Medevac crew members “won’t talk about the impact on themselves when the injuries are so bad that, despite their best efforts, they cannot save the patient, or (they) arrive only to find that the patient has already died,” Joslin said.
Soldiers are not the only ones who benefit from the expertise of the Medevac teams, Joslin said.
“Hundreds of soldiers, Iraqis, contractors, civilians and even the enemy would not be alive today if it were not for the extraordinary individual and collective feats we ask these American heroes to do on a daily, routine basis,” he said.
The terrorists who fired the mortars that killed Brown would get the same treatment as a soldier trying to protect the innocent Iraqis.
After dropping off their patients, the Medevac crew sometimes immediately answer another call that’s come up, or they’ll return to base to wait for the next call.
In most cases, the crew never knows the eventual outcome of the patient they dropped off.
However, if Turner could say something to one of the hundreds of people he’s helped save, it might go something like this: “Good to see you, and thank you for your sacrifices … Can I buy you a beer?”
Joslin refers to his Medevac teams as “the closest thing to angels on earth,” but Turner, like most heroes, won’t admit what he does is special.
“We’re just regular people doing our job ó saving soldiers, Marines, airmen and even civilians … is our job,” he said.