Dustoff...
Real Stories of an Army Medic

Chapter 1

 Edward’s Air Force Base

Edward’s Air Force Base (AFB) is a very famous place, not just to the military aviation community but to people everywhere. The base is a Mecca of great modern adventures in aviation. It’s the place where Chuck Yeager first went faster than the speed of sound. It’s the place where the space shuttle first flew, and the place of countless other exciting and sometimes dangerous aviation firsts.

I will begin my story with my own meager involvement in that center of aviation firsts. I was employed as a flight medic for the U.S. Army, stationed at a remote desert base soon to be known as Fort Irwin, California. My job was a combination of emergency medical and technical rescue duties performed from a helicopter called a UH-1 or “Huey,” an old workhorse that had made a name for itself during the Vietnam War. I was temporarily assigned to the Army’s test flight center at nearby Edward’s AFB, where the venerable “Huey” was used as a rescue helicopter to support the test flights that were performed on military airplanes and helicopters. I found myself standing on the hallowed vast expanse of tarmac, surrounded by dry lakebed as far as the eye could see. This assignment was the first in a long line of incredible adventures. 

The rescue operation process came as quite a surprise to me. The basic idea was for the rescue helicopter to chase after and behind the test aircraft if it was a helicopter, and to orbit outside the test area if it was an airplane. The rescue helicopter carried two big tanks of water, and had a spray boom that projected from the front of the helicopter. The crew consisted of a pilot and copilot who occupied the cockpit, and a firefighter who occupied the crew compartment in the rear of the helicopter. The firefighter wore a silver fire suit and had a box of specialized tools for ripping open a crashed aircraft. I was aboard as the flight medic. The medical equipment I carried included lots of burn bandages.

If an unlucky test pilot crashed, the rescue helicopter would fly over the pilot’s aircraft and spray water on it in an attempt to put out the fire. The firefighter in his silver fire suit would get out and drag the injured aviator from the burning wreckage. If all went as planned, the survivor would be loaded on board the rescue helicopter and turned over to me. It was my job to keep the critically injured aviator alive until the helicopter could get to a medical facility. The only fly in the ointment was that the medical facilities at Edward’s AFB did not get the attention or funding that test programs received. Therefore, the injured test pilot had to be flown out of the high desert and into Los Angeles for medical treatment, which made my job more interesting.

Let me tell you about two occasions when my morning helicopter ride got very exciting.

The first incident took place when a small U.S. Air Force observer airplane crashed on the steep hillside of an Air Force bombing range. Because of strong winds that may have contributed to the crash, we could not reach the crash site until the following day. Upon landing on the hilltop, we scrambled down the rocky slope to the crash site.

The aircraft had crashed at slow speed and burned on impact. This allowed the aircraft to melt around the dead pilot, leaving his burnt torso exposed from the waist up, seemingly sitting upright in the burnt wreckage. His arms were burnt to stumps just past his elbows, and the wire frame of his headset was still sitting on his burnt, cracked skull. In an attempt to remove the pilot’s remains we grabbed him under each armpit and pulled him up and out of the burnt wreckage, resulting in the remains separating at the waist. We collected all the additional remains that we could and returned to the base.

The second incident involved an unfortunate two-man crew of an F-4 fighter plane. As this aircraft was streaking toward its intended target at low altitude, it hit the ground and the right wing was ripped off. The F-4 momentarily bounced back into the air and then started to roll. Immediately both crew members ejected from the stricken aircraft. Because of the very low altitude and the spin of the F-4 after losing its wing, the ejection was only partly successful. Only the crew member in the back seat had enough time after ejection for his parachute to open before he hit the ground.

As our helicopter approached, we could see the burning remains of the aircraft and one crew member standing close to the crash site. Running toward the injured aviator, I yelled out to learn where the other crew member was. He pointed toward the burning wreckage. I started to run in that direction, but soon stopped. I could see the missing crew member’s parachute, which was spread out unopened over the desert floor. The pilot in the front seat had not been as lucky as his counterpart in back, but had hit the ground still in his ejection seat. The impact had thrown him across the desert floor to his death, his unopened parachute trailing behind.

We decided that since we had a doctor on board, the helicopter would take the injured crew member back to the base for medical treatment. I would wait on site with the dead pilot until an additional rescue helicopter arrived to collect the pilot’s remains.

I realized almost immediately upon the helicopter’s departure that I was alone in a desert valley full of unexploded bombs. I gave my attention to the F-4 that was  burning no more than 300 yards from me. No sooner had the helicopter departed than the flaming wreckage began shooting off its highly explosive anti-tank rounds. The exploding rounds were flying all around the desert floor. I found a small boulder, the only cover around, and lay down flat behind it until the shooting stopped. I remember thinking, “Will this small boulder even stop an anti-tank round? When the rescue helicopter arrives it will find two dead bodies.” 

Shortly after the shooting had stopped, I heard the familiar sound of a helicopter off in the distance. As you can imagine, I was now a little tense. I took out my survival radio from my survival vest and tried to contact the incoming rescue helicopter. It was imperative that he land in a spot free of unexploded munitions. My survival radio was not working, however, so I scrambled out from behind the boulder and resorted to the oldest and most reliable piece of survival gear I had, the survival mirror. The helicopter, which was no more than a tiny dot in the sky five miles away, was flying a course parallel to my position and could not see the smoldering wreckage or me from that distance. It took three flashes of the survival mirror to get the helicopter to turn and fly directly toward me.

I searched around and found a spot that was safe and large enough to land the helicopter. However, the pilot decided not to follow my visual hand signals and instead set the helicopter down so close to a large, unexploded round that the indentation of the helicopter skid tube into the ground caused the shell to actually shift position. I finished my morning at work by informing the hapless pilot that if it had not been for his seat harness, I would have pulled him entirely out of his helicopter and given him a first hand look at his landing site.