"God was truly watching," - Flight Medics make the difference for our Marines, Soldiers and all in need on the battlefield

A U.S. medevac helicopter arrives to evacuate Spc. Jeremy Kuehl, 24 of Altoona, Iowa, and from the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, who was seriously wounded when he stepped on an improvised mine near Command Outpost Nolen, in the volatile Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, Friday, July 30, 2010. .

No other way to put it....Medivac teams are the difference between life and death for our troops, especially when they need to get to a CSH (Combat Surgical Hospital)

God Bless them as they fly into the hot zones and put their own lives at risk so that others may live.

Medevac team saves lives in Afghanistan
By BRENNAN LINSLEY The Associated Press
lacrossetribune.com Posted: Sunday, December 5, 2010 12:01 am

EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press photographer Brennan Linsley recently spent a week embedded with Charlie Company, from the U.S. Army's Dustoff Task Force Shadow, of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. He describes the work of Army medevac teams in the war zone of southern Afghanistan.

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan — It was pushing dusk when the call came: "One Category Alpha." The voice crackled over the radio, urgent but matter-of-fact. Translation: One man badly wounded, medical care needed right away.

The medical evacuation team - a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, flight medic and, on this day, an AP photographer - scrambled into the Black Hawk helicopter. In a few minutes we were zigzagging at more than 150 mph, the fields and mud compounds blurring past like a movie in fast forward. The crew chief held up two fingers: Distance from landing zone, two minutes.

As darkness fell, the Marines ignited a colored smoke grenade to mark the landing zone. The Black Hawk touched down only to be fired on by insurgents hiding nearby, despite the clear red cross marked on its nose and sides. It rose again and circled.

When it landed the second time, the crew chief threw open the side door to a storm of dust. Within seconds the Marines hauled aboard their comrade, who had a gunshot wound to the head.

The helicopter flew off, low and fast under fire. The medic went straight to work. But the wound was too severe.

The Marine died. Lance Cpl. Ross S. Carver of Rocky Point, N.C., was 21 years old.

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At least 1,310 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died since the Afghan war started, and at least 8,530 have been wounded. But the toll would be even higher if not for the medevac teams that swoop in to rescue the wounded and deliver them to relative safety.

Medevac teams work at about 20 locations in Afghanistan, where they serve as a net of sorts for soldiers and Marines caught in a high-wire act every day. The medics save everybody - U.S. soldiers and Marines, Afghan civilians, even Taliban fighters. The Helmand-based medevac team I traveled with - Charlie Company, from the 6th Battalion and 101st Aviation Regiment, known as Shadow Dustoff - is among the busiest in Afghanistan. Since the team arrived this spring, they have gone on more than 2,000 missions and have evacuated more than 2,500 patients.

In just five days, the team I was with picked up two Marines who died and five more who were wounded, as well as several wounded Afghan soldiers and civilians. The crews described it as a slow week.

The Army considers medevac crews to be among the most prone to post-traumatic stress because they see so much pain and carnage. Their job is dangerous: The medic and crew chief must often walk out to stunned or grieving soldiers over uncleared ground and take quick control. Crew members say it messes with their heads when soldiers are maimed.

"Sometimes we feel guilty. But it's just not your fault," says Staff Sgt. Audrey Ramos, 28, a flight medic with a Shadow Dustoff team. "You have to let it go. If you harbor it, if you carry it with you to the next mission, then you won't be able to give everything you need to give to the next soldier who has a chance to survive."

Ramos doesn't think about the politics of those she picks up - a life is a life. She says the job is the closest she can get to being on the front line: Injuries are intense, adrenaline runs high and soldiers look at you and the aircraft as a beacon of hope.

"I think that they see us as saviors," says Ramos. "It's humbling. I like to be a part of something bigger than me."

The vast majority of troops wounded in Afghanistan survive, thanks to the medevac teams. But that doesn't make it any easier to see somebody die.

When a soldier or Marine dies, it makes the war horribly real, very suddenly. As I was photographing the dying man half my age, I thought about all the things he would never see or do. I wondered about whether he had children back home. (He did, a son.)

But the words of soldiers and Marines I've patrolled on the ground with echoed through my head, always some variation of this: "The people back home don't have (any) idea what we're going through here. You can show them.

"You should've been here last week. My friend was blown up right in front of me."

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The day before, a bomb had indeed exploded near a young Marine, Pfc. Justin Turner, 20, of Flower Mound, Texas.

Turner, who had been on a foot patrol, was scheduled to be promoted that day to lance corporal. The improvised explosive device, apparently detonated by remote control, spared his foot but left behind a shrapnel wound.

At first Turner didn't even know he was hit. His ears were ringing loudly, and there was a huge dust cloud. He tried to walk, but his foot felt as though it was broken.

That's when he noticed that his sock felt wet and blood was coming from his right boot. He was more angry than scared.

Staff Sgt. Richard Jarrett, a flight medic, ran to the wounded Marine, about 50 yards away from the landing zone. Arm in arm, Jarrett and Marine infantrymen helped Turner hobble toward the Black Hawk. The ground was rough, and one Marine tumbled into a deep irrigation ditch and became mired in mud.

As Jarrett checked and rewrapped Turner's bloodied-but-whole right foot, the two men joked and smiled at one another, yelling over the deafening roar of the airborne Black Hawk. Perhaps both were just relieved that Turner was one Marine who would be OK that day.

One more step, and he would have been killed by the blast.

"God was truly watching," Turner later said.

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It isn't always that way. On another rescue for Jarrett's crew the same day, the helicopter landed in a dusty haze to pick up two Marines said to be in potentially critical condition.

The first, shot in the chest, was carried unconscious to the helicopter by his comrades and gently laid on the floor.

Next came the other, shot twice in the arm. He walked aboard without help. The pilots took off full-throttle, accelerating and zigzagging - called yanking and banking - to evade enemy fire.

The Marine with the arm wounds had a tourniquet tightly applied and was sitting up, in pain but alert.

Jarrett focused on reviving the other man. He made an incision in the Marine's windpipe to put an oxygen tube through, in a complex tracheotomy. Wincing in pain, the other Marine used his able hand to help seal the tube.

But there wasn't enough lung tissue for the incoming air to reach, and the oxygen simply left again through the many holes made by the bullet.

Minutes later, we landed at a field hospital. The two patients were rushed into the trauma ward.

A short time later, the Marine with the chest wound - Lance Cpl. Joshua T. Twigg of Indiana, Pa. - was pronounced dead.

After a death - referred to as a KIA for Killed In Action, or often as an Angel - there is a marked silence among the crew, a sadness that hangs heavy. There are none of the usual jokes about how tight the landing zone was, or how deep the mud turned out to be, or where the ground fire was coming from. Medics often go away to be alone for a while, but there's never far to go since they must stay near the helicopter.

Crew members go through their routines, refuel, shut down their craft, examine it for battle damage and clean out the blood, used gauze, airway tubes, needles and other medical refuse, getting ready for the next emergency call.

It could come at any minute.

" They Don't Want the Taliban " - Steady Progress is made in ridding Afghanistan of the cowardly & murderous thugs who profit from others suffering

This is the kind of news we rarely read - not because the story details something rare, but because the Media so rarely reports the story of the SUCCESS of our troops and their mission.

The old Axiom of " It Bleeds, It Leads" is still firmly in place.....the death of soldiers, innocent civilians and other horrific news comes first. I saw both while I was there in AFGHN - situations where we were dealt tragic outcomes but at the same time, great moments of incredible success...building schools for children, drilling wells and making life more tolerable for the citizen of Afghanistan...

Read on and see that not all of what happens in Afghanistan is or has been bad. Yes, corruption and strife are a way of life there but slowly life will become better for the citizens of Afghanistan. Ridding the land of the Terrorist Thugs who use Islam and their warped views of religion as a means to justify crimes against humanity will be the best method to establishing a safer region and land for Afghanistan.

Not too long ago, many saw Iraq as beyond hope....today it is a different story. Let us hope (and pray) that Afghanistan will establish a better future for itself with our help.

From Kandahar, a different view of war
By Karin Brulliard
Thursday, October 7, 2010 - Washington Post

SARKARI BAGH, AFGHANISTAN - One recent night, a buried bomb sliced through a hulking military vehicle near here, killing two U.S. soldiers. Last month, the Taliban murdered an Afghan man, stuffed his nose with cash, placed a Koran in his hands and hung his body from a tree. Almost every day, insurgents fire on American troops stationed in this rural village.

Even so, their company commander, Capt. Mikel Resnick, says: "We're winning the war up here."

As a major new offensive gets underway here in the Arghandab River valley and elsewhere in Kandahar province, criticism is rising in Washington about the coherence of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. President Obama is said to be troubled by mounting casualties, many in this southern Taliban stronghold. Skeptics in Congress and the White House are demanding more data on the progress of the war.

But the Delta Company soldiers in this one corner of one district have a different view. They arrived two months ago in what was clearly Taliban land. Today it is contested land. To them, violence is a sign of progress: Now the Taliban has someone to fight.

Theirs is, by necessity, a narrow perspective. Mere miles away, the battle is more pitched and the ground more treacherous. Yet, although he does not have charts or graphs to prove it, Resnick, 27, insists that he also sees what the military calls changed "atmospherics": busy stores and streets, tea served to U.S. soldiers. These are glimmers of what commanders say could amount to longer-term success.

"They don't want the Taliban," the battalion commander of troops in the region, Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, said of Afghans in the valley. "But I think they're still waiting to see what happens."

That assessment highlights the awkward arithmetic behind the influx of U.S. forces into southern Afghanistan, where troops carry the hefty assignment of ejecting the Taliban and linking isolated villagers to local governments. The clock is ticking in Washington midway between Obama's December 2009 troop surge announcement and his July 2011 troop drawdown pledge. But many soldiers have only recently carved bases into remote mountainsides and begun chipping away at a mission they say is difficult but doable.

Encouraging signs

Influential landowners and elders fled as the Taliban presence grew over the last five years in Arghandab, a fertile valley abutting Kandahar city, and many of the few remaining are scared to associate with American troops. Afghan police are widely disliked. Tribal dynamics are opaque, and though Resnick and other commanders took crash courses in Afghan culture, they acknowledge they are not experts.

The part they are experts in - war - is also daunting. The valley's pomegranate orchards and muddy canals make for treacherous terrain that favors insurgents, not U.S. spy planes and tanks. Across the river from the Sarkari Bagh patrol base is a green swath where there is no coalition presence - a perfect escape route for the Taliban that Resnick calls the "wild, wild West."

Still, Resnick and his second-in-command, Capt. Clayton Hendon, 26 - both garrulous former West Point football players - confidently tick off the headway they believe their company has made toward improving security. Soldiers have killed at least a dozen insurgents and suffered zero casualties. Open stores in Sarkari Bagh have quadrupled, and in towns that emptied at the sight of a U.S. soldier two months ago, children swarm and troops sit for tea, they said.

On the day of parliamentary elections in mid-September, a daisy-chain bomb planted in an alley regularly patrolled by soldiers seriously injured a child. But overall there was less violence than Resnick expected.

"We thought our area . . . was going to explode on election day," Resnick said. "And it didn't."

Trying to win trust

A tripling of the number of soldiers in this area means that several times a week, Delta Company can patrol orchards that the Taliban roamed freely until this summer and villages where coalition forces had never been before.

But that is where the task - winning trust and connecting people to the government - gets tougher.

On a recent afternoon, a platoon drove on a main road the soldiers call Devil's Alley for its frequent roadside bombs. The destination was Khevejeh Molk, a village the troops considered hostile two months ago and where the Taliban is still powerful enough to have scared off the tribal chief.

The leader of the platoon assigned to the town, 1st Lt. Scott Hendrickson, 31, approached a tailor's shop that symbolized both progress and problems. The suspicious-looking young men who used to hang around had vanished, and the old men inside chatted amiably with Hendrickson, praising the improved security. Then, as if to test him, they asked for solar-powered lights.

"But do it practically!" said one man with a white turban and a glint in his eye. "Not just a promise."

"Tell him the Taliban keep trying to blow up my trucks whenever I come up here," Hendrickson said to his interpreter. "Tell him I need him to help me get rid of the Taliban so I can give him light."

Resnick said a few village elders in his area now feel safe enough to travel 30 minutes south to the district center, which U.S. officials offer as a success story, citing a huge growth in daily visitors, a new court system and a quadrupling of open schools.

The previous district governor was assassinated in June, and most district ministers are too frightened to go to work. But the new district governor, Shah Mohammed, says he is unafraid, and U.S. officials say he is helping to unite the valley's elders.

"You can't really measure energy, but you can feel it," said Chris Harich, a U.S. State Department representative based at the center.

A fatal blast

Up in Delta Company's turf, as in other parts of Arghandab, Taliban "fighting season" - defined by ambushes and shootouts - has given way to a new phase of combat featuring homemade bombs. Military commanders portray this, too, as progress, arguing that it means the Taliban is unwilling to fight face to face.

But it is also a tactic that defines asymmetrical warfare, and it makes bonding with potential Afghan tipsters particularly urgent.

With that and other tasks in mind, a platoon set out on foot one morning from Combat Outpost Sarkari Bagh toward a hamlet that has a friendly tribal chief. 1st Lt. David Burgio, 24, sat on Lal Makhmad's floor, sipping sugary tea and asking Makhmad whether the village might form a community watch. Mahkmad said yes, but only if security improved first, because such a group would invite Taliban wrath.

The conversation continued in a circle. Burgio prodded; Makhmad demurred. Finally, Makhmad agreed that in principle, it could be a good idea.

Burgio counted the visit as a success. The next night, Resnick, sitting with Hendon in their tent office, said such victories were "unconventional, to say the least," but they were adding up.

A few hours later, a low boom sounded in the distance. A bomb clearance convoy based in another district had been struck just a few miles away. A hectic rescue operation ensued from Sarkari Bagh, but two American soldiers could not be saved, and helicopters came to evacuate their bodies and two other soldiers injured in the blast.

The explosion left a 10-foot-deep crater along the main road - close to Makhmad's village. Lemons, the battalion commander, said later that intelligence indicated that the bomb had been tunneled in under the road from an adjacent canal, probably the same day. If true, that might suggest that villagers had done nothing to stop it.

But the morning after the bombing, a red-eyed Resnick said he still felt undeterred. He said he believed the mine might have been a "legacy," or one planted long before the road was paved.

"I never thought I'd have to fly a flag out of here," he said, referring to the U.S. flags that helicopter rescue teams carry with them to cover the bodies of soldiers killed in action. "Or I guess that was my dream."