Dustoff

Arnold Sampson

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The stories of the 'Dustoff' rescues have been told before, but the heroic levels of courage that the crews displayed cannot be ce...

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The stories of the 'Dustoff' rescues have been told before, but the heroic levels of courage that the crews displayed cannot be celebrated too often nor too loudly. The soldiers assigned to Vietnam used helicopters to go from point 'A' to point 'B' as safely as possible. Medical evacuation helicopters (medevac choppers), also known as 'Dustoff' ships, were the lifeline between a soldier with a severed foot and a top-notch, case-hardened facility that could save a man and not be daunted oby severe injuries. These unarmed ships would journey valiantly any condition, including nighttime missions with limited lighting, cutting through midnight storms that might ground any other aircraft, and would perform extractions immediately following or during active hostile fire exchanges. This was all done before GPS equipment was available to tactical aircraft. The four-man crew of Dustoff choppers were known (and indeed, expected) to go anywhere at any time to save the lives of people they would only see once in life. The missions were undertaken without hesitation, and the crew would march forward with little detail of the exact location of potential patients. The experiences of relative safety in the confines of one's home base could be as dangerous to one's mind and spirit as the sound of small arms gunfire could be when the ship neared the ground. When an uncle, a brother, a cousin, or a former boyfriend came back to the war and seemed 'different,' this book details some of the experiences that may have impacted that person and made them act as stunned, as closed-mouthed, as angry, as paranoid, as untrusting and as indifferent as he did. There were as many Vietnams as there are Veterans who survived it or appeared to. Every man's experience or his perception of that experience was different. Many a man came home and had no more to say about his year away than the average child says when a parent asks, 'How was school today?'