AFGHANISTAN (July 29, 2015) -- Within an hour of its transfer of authority, Task Force Shadow Dustoff received its first 9-line or medical evacuation request.
It was 1 p.m. on April 8, 2015. A mass casualty event just happened at Jalalabad Airfield, or JAF. Five U.S. Soldiers were injured in a "green-on-blue" attack, with an Afghan soldier opening fire on the team training with him. In less than 15 minutes, the duty crews were wheels up and enroute to JAF.
"It was hectic," said Maj. Travis Owen, commander, Charlie Company, 6th Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). "There was a lot going on. The pilots in command took charge and we headed out to Jalalabad. The crews ended up having to do two turns between Bagram and Jalalabad that day because of the patients' critical state."
Charlie Company, 6-101st Task Force Shadow, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, has been in country since March 2015. Approximately 75 of its 110 members, including 15 HH-60M helicopters, are based at five locations - Bagram, Jalalabad, Camp Dahlke, Camp Chapman, and Kandahar Airfield. During its nine-month tour here, it will provide theatre-wide aeromedical evacuation for U.S. coalition forces, contractors, Department of Defense civilians, and Afghan forces.
After graduating from the Florida Institute of Technology in May 2005, Owen was commissioned in the U.S. Army as a 2nd lieutenant. He attended the officer basic course on Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and then flight school in January 2006 on Fort Rucker, Alabama.
This is his third deployment. He first deployed to Iraq in 2007, and then to Bagram in 2009. He became a pilot because it was something he had always wanted to do while growing up. It was his mother, who helped him decide that going into the military was the best way to accomplish that goal.
"We're on duty all of the time," he said. "Our job is 24/7 uninterrupted medevac coverage. We're always at a heightened state of readiness. Should a mission drop, we have something called the 'golden hour,' the hour immediately following injury. Statistically, getting a patient to the next highest level of care within that hour greatly increases their chances of survival, up to the 97th percentile. And, as the fastest form of evacuation, medevac is an integral part of that process."
The team has four aircraft on duty here at Bagram, providing two lines of coverage called "first up" and "second up." First-up crews serve as the primary response team for missions, while second-up crews, though still held to the same 15-minute launch criteria, will launch only as a backup should patient load exceed capabilities of the first two aircraft.
In the medevac hangar, mornings are usually reserved for personal time and administrative items on the to-do list. Starting at 3 p.m. is an operations and intelligence brief, and a shift change handover, where operations updates are given.
"Once that happens, we're on duty," Owen said. "And we wait. And that's part of the fortunate and unfortunate part of the job. You're sitting around, waiting on that call. But when it comes, you have to be ready to go. That's the unfortunate part - the waiting around. The fortunate part is you know that if you're not getting called, people aren't getting hurt."
He said the mission has changed since he was a lieutenant in Iraq in 2007. At that time he was flying up to eight hours a day, clearing the battlefield for injuries from a myriad of causes.
"You name it," he said. "It happened. And that continued for Iraq and here [in Afghanistan] all the way up to about 2012, 2013. That's when things started slowing back. With the drawdown, there were fewer troops who were less likely to get attacked. And then as we transitioned to a train, advise, assist mission, it's slowed down significantly more."
Between first- and second-up crews, Owen's team has eight pilots on call, although the pilots themselves are not "technically medical." It's what goes on in the back with patient treatment that's different. This rotation specifically is noteworthy, as critical care nurses like Capt. Mary Wallace are now flying as actual crew members, trained and progressed in back-seat duties in addition to providing the enroute critical medical care.
"I came up as a nurse then trained in the critical care specialty," Wallace said. "That's when I was connected with this unit while they were still at Fort Campbell. Maj Owen and 1st Sgt. James Conway really did an excellent job training us up prior to deployment. Our position is very new in the medevac world. They're helping pave the way to have critical care nurses serving with the medics. It's proving to have a much better survival rate with two medical providers back there [in the helicopter]."
This is Wallace's second deployment. Before deploying with Charlie Company, her preparation included training flights, how to talk on a radio and communicate with the pilots, and a lot of simulated patient care in the back of a helicopter to introduce her to the fast-paced op tempo of a Medevac mission.
"For the first time, you're seeing an enroute critical care nurse [ECCN] go through the actual progression of an actual crew member," Owen said. "Which is unheard of in the Army. And let's say I have a crew member that goes down, you can see immediately the value there. He or she can cover down for any crew member in the rear of the aircraft to assist with that procedure."
"It's been great working with the medics because they have a whole different point of view on how to take care of Soldiers when you first get them," Wallace said. "And then we bring in the long-term type care or the critical care side of it - ventilators, things like that - that are more prevalent in the critical side. With all of that combined, we have a really great team that's able to take care of the full picture."
"Each crew member participates in the overall function of the aircraft," Owen said. "The difference with the ECCNs is that their primary function is patient care. However, if the safety of the aircraft ever becomes compromised, that ECCN is a part of the crew and able to function as such. So, let's say the medic is focused inside conducting operations. The nurse has the ability to cover down for that side of the aircraft and act as a crew member in that aspect. Which contributes to the overall safety of our flight."
1st Lt. Amberly Weber, section leader, grew up in an Air Force family of pilots. Her dad was a C-130 pilot, which is where he met her mom, a flight nurse. Weber's uncle was a bomber pilot and another uncle was a fighter pilot.
"I joined the Army to be Dustoff and fly medevac," she said. "My parents, uncles and sister are all Air Force so they naturally tried to talk me out of it. But my grandmother and grandfather had both served in the Army in World War II, and they loved watching "M*A*S*H*" reruns in the afternoons. I grew up watching "M*A*S*H*" with them, and that was where the dream first came from, to be able to fly that mission in combat."
This is her first deployment. She spent a little more than a year on Fort Rucker for flight school, graduated in March 2014, and by May, had arrived on Fort Campbell.
"I love being deployed," Weber said. "I'm blessed to finally be able to fly the medevac mission, which has been the goal for so long, and I'm lucky to be with a really wonderful group of people here at BAF [Bagram Airfield] and at our other sites. Our company has outstanding, motivated Soldiers and leadership. Thus far it's been an incredible experience."
Staff Sgt. Zachary Rice, crew chief and headquarters platoon sergeant, manages the maintenance on all of the aircraft here at BAF. He comes from a military Family and said he not only loves helicopters, but the thought of flying always interested him.
This is his third deployment. He was deployed to Iraq in 2009, and Regional Command - South (Afghanistan) in 2012.
"A helicopter is a more advanced system, as opposed to working on a motorcycle or anything else," he said. "It's challenging. Whenever you break something that you're not used to, the trouble-shooting procedures, and trying to figure out what's wrong with it can become very involved. In a lot of cases, it's very similar to the human body, and diagnosing symptoms and illness there. So it's fun cross training with the medics and getting to work on patients, as well as work on helicopters. It's pretty cool."
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Christopher Colon, one of the primary trainers for the Dustoff mission and pilot in command, is on his seventh deployment. He was the lead pilot of the team called out to Jalalabad, April 8. He's been to Bosnia, and to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times.
With a 14-year military police background, his last two deployments have been aviation deployments - first to Jalalabad then multiple locations after that. During one of his previous Iraq rotations as a military policeman, he was himself medevaced.
"So I have a profound respect for Dustoff," he said. "I went to flight school with the specific target of becoming a Dustoff aviator. So I'm lucky that when I arrived to Fort Campbell I was assigned to Medevac."
He said his career is "very unique." He was infantry for two years then crossed over to be a military police officer.
"I excelled as a senior NCO [noncommissioned officer]," Colon said. "I felt I was comfortable at that level and needed another challenge. Hence the process of applying for warrant officer. I've always wanted to be an aviator. I thought that maybe earlier on in my career I would do it. But since I was comfortable, I opted to stay in my career field. There was a lot of enjoyment, career advancement was very easy. The opportunities as an MP were broad as well so I stayed there. They do lend themselves extremely and drastically to this mission."
He also said that understanding what the ground force element is doing and how they're operating, along with what type of situations and scenarios they're in, applies itself to his job as a pilot in command. He's better able to make quick decisions in the air based off his understanding of what's happening on the ground. He said that's really a pilot in command's job in the aircraft - accepting the responsibility and understanding what the ground force commander's intent is and what the ground force element is going through when the 9-Line is called.
"You have to understand how to communicate, where to communicate, and when to communicate," Colon said. "You have to understand where to be, how to be, and how to put yourself in the best position to assist that ground force element. Because you don't want to go in there, in the middle of a gun fight, put an aircraft down and then create a situation which is more difficult for the ground unit. This mission is way more intense than regular passenger pickup, or missions of that type. So these are concerns that we all have, and having that extra bit of experience definitely lends itself to the mission."
"Yes, it's great being a pilot," Owen said. "But since I joined the military, the thing that I've really developed a passion for is being a leader and the people that I work with. At the end of the day, that's what this job is about. We are in the 'people' business. So that's really where I get the most job satisfaction is working with Soldiers - the sons and daughters of America."
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