by Oliver North
Pedros crew chief
The Pedros are always in high demand. That’s because these “rescue warriors” are willing to go where other medevac units won’t to save the lives of Coalition forces and Afghan civilians alike. Red crosses—the universal symbol for medical personnel —are conspicuously absent from their aircraft. That’s because the Geneva Convention expressly forbids medical personnel displaying the symbol from carrying weapons. Not that any of that stops the Taliban—they’ll shoot at any helicopter regardless its markings.
But the Pedros will shoot back if they are shot at and they happily forego the “protection” of the red cross in exchange for the ability to do so. As is their practice, two Birds were spinning up for the mission.
As the Pave Hawks completed final preparations for takeoff, I watched as the crew chiefs readied their door-mounted weapons—twin GAU-17 miniguns capable of firing four thousand rounds per minute of 7.62 ammunition. If the Taliban planned to disrupt this mission, they had better think twice.
The senior mission crew chief put cameraman Chuck Holton on one Bird and me on the other and asked, “Are you armed?”
“Sure,” I said, holding up my camera. “I have a Sony but Chuck is carrying his Canon.” He shook his head and grinned as I jumped aboard and slithered into a web belt connected to the floor of the chopper by a five-foot strap. There were no seats, because most of the “passengers” the Pedros transport, take the ride lying down. I wedged myself into a niche between the two door gunners just as the helicopter lifted off.
Staff Sgt William Lawson, a Pararescueman with the 129th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, keeps an eye on the countryside as he cares for a wounded Afghan National Army soldier from the Hemland Province, Afghanistan. Sergeant Lawson will provide care to the injured soldier until he is safely delivered to a hospital.
Moments later we were pounding over the Afghan countryside at over one hundred fifty miles per hour—so low it seemed I could reach out and touch our shadow as it raced along over trees and mud-brick houses below. The combination of speed and extremely low altitude are breathtaking—but essential. The Pedros fly low and fast because it is the safest way to get a wounded patient to a hospital without getting shot down. At treetop level, by the time any enemy saw us, we’d already be gone.
Tech Sergeant Richard Oberstar was one of two Pararescuemen (called “PJ’s”) on the Bird. Both of them sat with their feet hanging out the doors, scanning the ground below with M-4 assault rifles at the ready. Their faces showed no sign of tension or anxiety—this was their element and it showed. As we swept over the outskits of Kandahar, Bill, the other PJ, reached into a green aviator kit bag and produced a plastic bag. It contained a small stuffed penguin, some pencils, and a little bound notebook. I gave him a look that said, “What’s that for?” He flashed a crooked smile that said, “Watch this.”
Bill leaned out of the helicopter, scanning the ground ahead of us. Below a small village came into view, with a half-dozen mud-walled compounds. Just before our aircraft flashed over it, Bill tossed the plastic bag down and away from the chopper. Children instantly raced out of the mud-walled huts to retrieve the gifts.
Stuffed animal bombs. Now that’s diplomacy—and a whole lot different than the kind the Soviets practiced. They built tiny bombs that looked like children’s toys and dropped them over Afghan villages.
TSgt Oberstar grinned and gave Bill a thumbs-up. Oberstar was no stranger to saving lives. After five years as an Air Force dog handler, he decided to try out for Pararescue. Though older than the average inductee, he successfully completed the grueling two-year pipeline they call “Superman school,” and took his place among fewer than four hundred Air Force Pararescuemen. That was twelve years ago.
The flight of two Pave Hawks pulled up and over the serrated edge of a rocky ridgeline, shooting so close through a mountain pass that for a moment we were looking up at sheer rock walls on both sides of the aircraft. Then, a gut-wrenching drop back down to the valley below. Soon we arrived at a tiny Special Forces firebase tucked away in the mountains of Oruzgan province. The helos set down on a gravel helipad as a camouflaged ambulance raced to meet us. Oberstar and his partner unhooked from the Bird and ran to assist.
The child, strapped to a litter, was carefully lifted out of the ambulance by a team of medics and carried to our helicopter. He already had an IV in his arm and an oxygen tube leading into his tiny nose. Behind them the boy’s father followed, his traditional Afghan robe whipped about by the rotor wash from the HH-60. The Pararescuemen escorted him along with his son and put them both on the helicopter with great care. Seconds later they hopped aboard and shut the doors to shield the unconscious boy from the blast of wind as we lifted off.
The boy’s father was terrified. We were soon flying along at 150 knots, one hundred feet about ground level. Given the remote neighborhood we just left, it’s likely the fastest he’d ever traveled before was at the speed of his old Russian farm tractor. This was completely outside the realm of his experience.
As we flew back to Kandahar, the father alternately reached out to hold his son’s hand with a mixture of genuine concern for his boy and then out the Plexiglas door panel—the abject terror at his first flying experience evident on his face. He had probably seen a helicopter before and might even have shot at one. But after this day I was willing to bet he never would again.
The boy was transferred to the level-three trauma facility at Kandahar and was expected to fully recover. Some say I’m naive about events like this, but I’m betting the Pedros’ rescue flight made an ally out of the boy’s father.
TSgt Oberstar and his crew went on to perform seven more missions that day alone. Just a few weeks later another aircraft from the 41st Expeditionary Rescue Squadron was on a mission to save wounded British soldiers when they were shot down by an enemy rifle grenade. Four men died in the resulting crash, including two Pararescuemen, TSgt Michael Flores and SrA Benjamin White. Flores, a thirty-one-year-old husband and father of two who was on his second tour in Afghanistan, is credited with the original idea of putting toys and goodies in plastic bags and tossing them to children while en route to missions. These four brave men died while living up to the motto of the Pararescuemen: “That others may live.”
HH-60 helicopter, about $16 million dollars. Training for the aircrew, about $4 million dollars. Training for the PJ’s in the back, about a million dollars apiece.
Saving the life of a wounded American or Afghan child—priceless.
Honor Guard members of the 305th Air Mobility Wing, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, perform a twenty-one gun salute for the funeral of Master Sgt Michael Maltz of the 38th Rescue Squadron, Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. Maltz was killed when his Pave Hawk helicopter crashed eighteen miles north of Ghanzi, Afghanistan, on the way to rescue Afghan children.
SUPERMAN SCHOOL
Saving lives. That’s what being a pararescueman, or “PJ” is all about. But being a professional rescuer means making a living going into places everyone else wants to escape. And that takes a special kind of selflessness and sacrifice. It also takes a tremendous amount of training.
Pararescuemen probably get more real-world experience than any other branch of the military. That’s because lifesavers aren’t only needed in wartime. Once trained, PJ’s regularly perform rescues at sea, on mountaintops, during floods, fires, storms, and earthquakes. In between disasters, they train constantly to keep their skills sharp.
The pararescue “pipeline,” is the two-year process by which a man becomes qualified to do this job. Part of the process is as follows:
• THE PARARESCUE/COMBAT CONTROL INDOCTRINATION COURSE
Ten weeks, Lackland AFB, Texas
• US ARMY AIRBORNE PARACHUTIST SCHOOL
Three weeks, Fort Benning, Georgia—learning how to perform static-line parachute jumps out of a perfectly good airplane.
• US ARMY COMBAT DIVERS SCHOOL
Four weeks, Key West
, Florida—basic and advanced training in advanced scuba diving, water infil/exfil techniques, and underwater rescue.
• US NAVY UNDERWATER EGRESS TRAINING
One day, Pensacola NAS, Florida—how to escape an aircraft that has crashed in water.
• US AIR FORCE BASIC SURVIVAL SCHOOL
Two and a half weeks, Fairchild AFB, Washington—living off the land, navigation, and how to survive in hostile territory.
• US ARMY MILITARY FREEFAL PARACHUTIST SCHOOL
Five weeks, Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona—HALO parachuting.
• SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMBAT MEDIC COURSE
Twenty-two weeks, Fort Bragg, North Carolina—extensive training in all areas of trauma medicine, minor surgery, combat trauma management, pharmacology, and combat evacuation procedures.
• PARARESCUE RECOVERY SPECIALST COURSE
Twenty weeks, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico—how to get into and out of any environment safely. Includes mountaineering, skiing, advanced parachuting, and combat tactics.
One look at the crushing schedule of training, and it’s easy to see why they call the process of becoming a pararescueman “superman school.”
SCUBA SCHOOL
Some form of “Scuba School” is offered by every branch of the military. Usually around six weeks in duration, they all train Special Operators on the basics of underwater navigation, physiology, and both closed- and open-circuit breathing systems. Believed by many to be the most physically demanding military school, it requires students to learn to swim distances over fifty meters underwater, to share breathing apparatus with a buddy, learn submarine lock in/lock out procedures, long-distance swimming, and deep diving among other skills.
The Army Combat Diver Qualification Course (CDQC) takes place at Key West, Florida. The price of admission: Just to get into the course, each student must be able to tread water for two minutes continuously, with both hands and ears out of the water; swim twenty-five meters underwater without breaking the surface, retrieve a twenty-pound weight from a depth of three meters and perform a surface swim of five hundred meters, nonstop, using only the breaststroke or sidestroke.
Because of the extremely physical nature of the course, there is always some risk involved. While the military takes every precaution to safeguard the lives of the men who enter, students have been killed in training, a fact which underscores the high level of commitment of these Special Operations warriors.
Staff Sergeant Mark Maierson was one of those. A member of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, Maierson had already proven his mettle many times over, successfully completing the Special Forces Qualification course, Airborne school, and even the grueling Survival Evasion Resistance Escape course at Fort Bragg. In addition, the stocky engineer sergeant proved himself in combat, earning a Bronze Star in Afghanistan. He was the very picture of health and vitality.
No one knows exactly what caused the twenty-seven-year-old Maierson to black out in the pool during the initial phase of the Army’s Special Forces Underwater Operations School on 13 March 2009. Medical professionals standing by immediately pulled him from the water and administered aid, but his heart had stopped. There was nothing they could do.
Maierson dedicated his life to the service of his country and his fellow man. He may not have died in battle, but his sacrifice illustrates just how much courage and commitment it takes even to prepare a Special Operator for the field.
Staff Sgt Mark Maierson in dive school (in forefront)
CAMP MOGENSON
QALAT, ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
On 8 April, Chuck Holton—combat cameraman, editor, frequent-flyer friend, and war-zone companion—and I boarded a Black Hawk helicopter in Kandahar Air Base and headed out to Camp Mogenson, a small Special-Operations base outside the city of Qalat, where we were to be embedded with SEAL Team Three.
Camp Mogenson is named after a Green Beret, Staff Sergeant Robert J. Mogenson. He was a weapons sergeant assigned to the third Special Forces group when he was killed by an IED on his way back from a mission here in Zabul province in May 2004. Also killed in that IED strike was Captain Dan Eggers, a Citadel graduate who also had a camp named after him—near the American embassy in Kabul. Having a base named after you is the kind of honor most men seek to avoid, for the same reason few warriors set out to get a Medal of Honor—one normally has to die to get it. If I’ve learned anything in the years I’ve spent in and around the military, it is that when bullets are flying, it’s love for one’s comrades that makes men do valiant things, not the hope of an award.
Our chopper set down on a rudimentary gravel helipad outside the camp, a typical border-land outpost surrounded by “Hesco” barriers—large wire-framed, fabric-lined containers filled with Earth to create quick and effective protection on hastily constructed outposts in the war zone. Living conditions inside the camp were Spartan, but more comfortable than we often found with regular U.S. Army and Marine units in the field.
Like many Special-Operations bases, Camp Mogenson had some creature comforts—like showers, a generator, lights, a chow hall—even bunks to sleep on instead of the dirt. Some Special-Ops bases we have lived in—even in some of the remotest places on the planet have modern creature comforts like refrigeration and air conditioners. On one base the communicators and engineers even found a way to deliver and hook up a large-screen TV. When the Team Chief was asked where it came from, he winked and said, “If you can’t get it you aren’t trying. And if you get caught, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
Afghan women in a compound
For its part, Camp Mogenson appeared to have been built in stages inside the compound of a former Afghan warlord. Large steel gates served as a portal into a warren of mud-brick buildings. These were modified by Sea-Bees for use as a headquarters building, a small chow hall staffed by a local Afghan family, and a weight room. Interspersed among them were shipping containers turned into housing units for additional troops and well-built metal-roofed, plywood buildings like those found at every “temporary” U.S. base around the world.
Chuck and I were graciously shown to the “VIP quarters”—a plywood room next door to the SEAL Team command post. It was the lap of luxury. We not only had electricity to charge the batteries for our equipment—but an air conditioner! It didn’t work. We dropped our gear and headed to the headquarters building to meet with the SEAL commander, who briefed us on the mission they planned for the following day.
Later, we accompanied some of the SEALs to the rifle range while they sighted-in their weapons in preparation for the next day’s mission. The range looked out on a barren hilltop and the SEALs expertly adjusted their sights and zeroed in on a few metal targets placed in the open ground several hundred yards away. Several times they had to stop shooting while Afghan goat herders ambled through the range, obviously certain the Americans wouldn’t fire on them.
That evening we dined with the SEALs and the Afghan soldiers and interpreters who would accompany us on the mission. The XO of the SEAL team explained that the Afghan troops were “fresh”—that this unit had just been established and was “early on” in their tactical proficiency.
Navy SEAL providing village overwatch
After nightfall, we received a call from FOX News in New York, requesting us to “come up” on our satellite gear for a live “hit” from the war zone. Chuck set up our Hughes BGAN satellite transceiver and ran cables while I hung my camouflage poncho liner on the plywood wall behind my bunk. We uploaded a short package about the takedown of a Taliban drug lab we’d been on the day before and went on Fox and Friends to discuss it with the folks back home.
In the U.S., some of the mainstream media outlets were reporting that U.S. troops were chaffing under a “tactical pause” and more restrictive rules of engagement (ROE) ordered by Kabul. On air, I acknowledged some of the Special Operators we’d been traveling with expressed
frustration that they weren’t being allowed sufficient latitude to take the fight to the enemy. One said he felt “like a meat eater being fed a steady diet of cabbage.” What we couldn’t reveal at the time was that the mission we were slated to do with the SEALs the following day was supposed to include a high likelihood of enemy contact.
Special Operators in the field told us the slowdown in “op tempo” was intended to give time for additional U.S. and allied troops to surge into the country. Lt Gen. David Rodriguez, the operational commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, called it “repositioning.” Others said is was all part of a “realignment” necessary to prepare for a major offensive being planned to secure the former Taliban stronghold in Kandahar.
Taking down a Taliban drug lab
With SEAL Team 3