When the PJ hops off his helicopter to start dealing with the wounded, his rifle is slung at his side where he can grab it and, if necessary, begin shooting with the weapon at his hip. It’s equipped with an infrared device mounted on top of the barrel that sends out a beam visible through his NVGs. All he has to do is point and shoot; the bullets hit what the beam hits. Unfortunately, the system doesn’t work as well if the shooter has to fire uphill, which is the situation the entire infantry company finds itself in.
Ethridge is also wearing his LBE, the load bearing vest carrying ammo and supplies he may need to reach quickly; and under that he’s wearing the standard body armor with chicken plates in front and back. And there are plenty of bullets coming down from the mountain. The Al Qaeda fighters have been shooting constantly since the troops were infiltrated more than twelve hours earlier, and they show no signs of running short on ammunition. As anticipated by Ethridge, and as predicted by the senior sergeants who supervised his selection as a PJ five years earlier, Ethridge acknowledged the existence of the enemy fire, but didn’t let it bother him. “I just kind of put it out of my mind. I’m here to pick up these guys. Yeah, I see tracers; they’re firing. But even if they were to start shooting at me, I can’t see what I’d be shooting at.” He really doesn’t finish the thought. He knew that his job was to take care of patients. That’s what he did.
Inside Gecko 11, gunner Durocher has watched his two PJs run about twenty meters to check with the medical guys on the ground. “It was still dark out,” he recalls, and then emphasizes it. “As dark as the inside of a black cat.” Realizing that there is no point in remaining at his position on the left side of the cabin when all the action is on the right, Durocher moves over in order to help load patients. “I’m pumped. I’m pumped hard. The only problem is everything’s on the right-hand side now, ’cause of the way we came in there, and I can’t shoot at anybody.” It’s a frustrating moment because all he can do is sit and watch red tracers impact the ground all around the helicopter. Eventually he helps load four patients, one who is critical in a Stokes litter, another in a standard field litter, and two who are ambulatory, one of whom is sitting behind his gunner position. When they are all packed in, both PJs are kneeling in the center of the cabin, facing outward and caring for their patients.
Looking at the casualties, especially the walking wounded, Durocher sees men who are in the same state of mind as those taken aboard Gecko 12. “There’s dismay on their faces. They just can’t believe it happened to them. I don’t believe anybody goes into combat with any misconception that they’re not going to get killed, but I don’t think anybody ever thinks they’re gonna get hit, y’know what I mean? It’s like you think, ‘Y’know what? I’m not coming out of this alive, but I’m okay with that.’ Or they think they’re not going to get hurt at all. Once you get hit, it’s like, ‘Holy shit, I can’t believe that happened.’ ”
On the other helo, the PJs are able to determine that all the patients are stable, with only a couple in bad shape. They have picked up one soldier who has a core temperature of ninety-three degrees and is very hypothermic, with a couple of gunshot wounds to boot. Caleb says, “The other guys were going to live, regardless. We were just getting them out, getting them out of the way, getting them back to safety so a lucky BB doesn’t kill them, or a mortar land on top of them.”
What surprised Ethridge when he had a chance to think about it was not the way he reacted to the gunshot wounds—PJs do their practical medical training riding ambulances in America’s inner cities, places like Prince Georges County, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn, New York; New Or-leans; St. Louis and Virginia Beach. They’ve seen more gunshot wounds, more trauma on those tours than they’re likely to see in a year riding HH-60Gs in Afghanistan. What Caleb reacted to was the way the soldiers looked after being under heavy fire for more than a dozen hours.
“The first guy I put in had a bullet wound to his left shoulder and to his right thigh. Looked pretty bad. He was lucky; it missed major vessels. But it was freezing cold, and you could tell he was hurting. He was done yelling. You could tell he was just too exhausted to yell or talk or anything. Just eyes glazed over. And they all . . . their skin looked just pale—I felt bad; they were really cold. They’d been out there for a while and nobody was able to get to them. They walked up to us all ragged, with no weapons, maybe an LBE, flak vest on still. But they were done fighting. They’re out of it. And you can tell. The guy, blood down his lip, or he fell and there’s blood running down his nose. He looked like he just got the crap smacked out of him, like he got jumped and then he got shot twice.”
The casualties have been out in the cold so long, it’s too much of a struggle to even talk. “They’re not trying to say, ‘Hey, thanks.’ They’re not saying, ‘Get me outta here!’ They’re just relieved. I’ve been really cold before, like that, and all you can think about is getting warm again. You just concentrate on being warm. And you’re not really thinking about anything else. You’re just quiet.”
Ethridge’s team leader on this mission is Brian Oswald, an ex-Army Special Forces Green Beret who crossed over into pararescue. While Caleb is loading three casualties, Oswald has gotten out the other side, run around to the front of the helo, and is helping move more of the wounded. At one point several rounds slam into the ground near his feet, and he turns and fires up toward the mountain. Caleb says, “He wasn’t hitting anything—probably—but he returned fire up there. And then he walked down and came over to me. I already had three patients in the helicopter, and I shouted, ‘I think this is about it.’ I had the one guy with the gunshot to the shoulder and thigh, and the other guys had shrapnel wounds and gunshot wounds to their feet, so they couldn’t walk. And then Brian goes, ‘I need a litter. We got a litter patient we need to carry.’ ”
Two things go through Ethridge’s mind. First, with three patients, a gunner, a flight engineer, and two PJs, they don’t have room for a litter patient, especially not on the Stokes litter, which is the standard wire basket they use to hoist patients on a cable when necessary. Second, while the folding Israeli litter they carry takes up less space, when bullets are flying, he’s not inclined to take time on the ground to put it together.
“It was about a hundred, hundred-fifty meters down into the valley, where a lot of the Army guys were sitting in groups. Brian and I are running from the helicopter in the open. It’s down a slight slope to the valley, scree, like rocks and some shrubs. Really nothing out there. We get to the 10th Mountain guy Brian wanted the litter for, and the guy is riddled with shrapnel from the mortar. I guess it landed pretty close to him, up and down his legs, so he can’t even move. Well, he can move his arms, but it’s painful to move his legs. He’d been lying there ever since he got hit. His buddies are around him, hearing a boom here, a boom there, and he’s screaming in pain.”
Ethridge has followed Oswald down the hill to the wounded soldier, carrying his rifle with a round in the chamber, and the 40mm grenade launcher attached. When he gets there, Oswald is kneeling next to the patient and he reaches up to grab Ethridge’s weapon, thinking it’s the litter. “I had to yell in his ear that there’s no time for a litter. We already got three guys in the back. So we’ll just drag him. His spine isn’t compromised.
“I’d always talked about that,” says Ethridge. “If a guy just has a gunshot wound to the thigh, and if I’m gonna go out there in a hail of bullets, I’m just gonna pick him up, fire, and carry and run. All that medical stuff goes out the window. Under the circumstances, it’s better to get him and let’s go.”
And that’s what the two PJs did under fire. “I got to the patient’s left shoulder, and we pretty much picked him up and carried him. Two Army guys got to the feet and were gonna carry his legs. He’s yelling all the way. We’re walking kind of weird. I slung my rifle, and we’re walking up the hill, kind of tripping and falling, and drop him a couple times. Not hard—he’s already real close to the ground and he hits, and he sh
outs, ‘Ahhhh!’ It’s, like, ‘All right, sorry,’ but they’re still shooting behind us.”
The amazing thing is that they weren’t hit, and neither was the helicopter. Ethridge says, “It seems like we got this force field around our helicopter. It was kind of amazing.”
Both PJs have kept their flight helmets on and remained in radio contact with the helicopters throughout the ordeal, just in case they are called back to make a quick exit. Each time Ethridge comes back to the helicopter, he gets questioned by the flight engineer, usually about what’s taking them so long. Helicopters tend to be bullet and RPG magnets; while running up and down hills may expose the PJs to enemy fire, sitting and waiting for them in a very large target is definitely unnerving.
After loading the mortar casualty, they pick up one more 10th Mountain soldier carrying an M-249 SAW—a light machine gun, officially a “squad automatic weapon.” The man has a gunshot wound to the foot and can’t walk. With him on board, they now have five patients and four crewmembers in the back end, making the rear of the Pave Hawk look a lot like a circus clown car just before entering the big top.
They have one patient behind the flight engineer on the right side of the helo toward the front of the compartment; another is squeezed in behind the gunner on the left side. Oswald crams himself in behind that patient, his butt against the door. Two more are seated on the floor, and the man with shrapnel wounds down his legs stands, his back toward the auxiliary fuel tanks. That leaves no room for Ethridge to get in, much less sit.
“That’s when Brian and I talked to the aircrew, ’cause three more patients had moved up. We’re saying, ‘We can stay on the ground and help out with any other casualties,’ but the aircrew was saying, ‘Nope, tell ’em to wait.’ There were Chinooks that were going to come in and pick them up.
“But I was sitting there with the door open, and one of the three, he looked like a young guy, nineteen or twenty, started climbing on the nets of the aux tanks. It’s like he was thinking, ‘Help is here, so I’m going home.’ While I was talking to the pilot, he’s crawling up into the helicopter. I grabbed him and pulled him down and out of the helicopter.
“He looked heartbroken when I told him he had to stay. ‘No, you guys gotta stay here. We’ll come back, or the Chinook’s gonna land.’ He gave me this look like I’d just signed his death warrant or something. He was done. He’d got shot up and was exhausted, and here’s the rescue that’s come to get him, and they’re too full.
“I ended up getting in. I had to move the legs of the guys with the shrapnel wounds just to get my feet in, and then I closed the door right behind me. My butt’s against the door. I’m standing straight up, and I got all this gear on. And all I can think of is getting shot in the ass on the way out. It was a forty-minute flight back to Bagram, and anytime I moved my feet or anything, the guy with the shrapnel is moaning.
“I couldn’t move; neither could Brian. We were packed in there like sardines in a can. And I just checked their level of consciousness; it was pretty much all I could do. I knew they were going to make it. I just wanted to make sure if anyone crashes, I can push the guys who aren’t dying out of the way and start working on him. But I checked—they only wanted to go to sleep; they were so exhausted.”
The crews of both helicopters know that lifting off from the LZ is going to be its own little adventure. The lead ship was ready to go while Ethridge was still figuring out how to take his ass with him on the return flight, so rather than wait, Ed Lengel opts to get airborne and out of range of a potentially lucky RPG. Durocher remembers that “the takeoff is sketchy. We get about a five-foot hover, a ground-effect hover, and then just run forward, flying down this ridgeline and barely take off outta there. We were really close on power.
“You feel the helicopter take off, and you can feel a good, steady five-foot hover, four-foot—or whatever you’ve got. And then it’s like the Little Engine That Could from that point on. You ease it forward and ease it forward, and you’ll drop down a little bit ’cause you’re losing that ground effect. And the faster and faster you get, the more and more lift you provide. As soon as you feel the grab in your butt, it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna actually take off,’ and you know you’re okay.
“We cleared a couple big-sized rocks, got on out of there. And then pulled up into an overhead to provide firepower for the guys on the ground. But the AC-130 gunship was handling that pretty well, and I didn’t think my minigun would help out very much.”
Gecko 11 goes up about seven hundred feet above the LZ, and then begins flying a circle.
Gecko 12’s pilots also planned to try to get a rolling start to give the rotors a chance to do their job. Ethridge recalls, “You could hear the engines just whining, tweaking every bit of energy possible to get out of there. The HH-60Gs are already way overgrossed; it’s scary. And then we’re at eighty-five hundred feet, picking up five people, which is not really what we’re designed to do. We’re always trying to pick up one pilot or two pilots who eject. And the whole time in Afghanistan we’re picking up SOF personnel and 10th Mountain soldiers. There weren’t any pilots ejecting.”
In addition to coping with excess weight and as a result not being nearly as nimble as they can be at sea level, they have to worry about enemy fire on liftoff. It was confirmed by one of the Australian SAS after the helos had already gotten to Bagram that a couple of RPGs had been fired at them, including one while they were still in the LZ.
All the way back to Bagram, Ethridge and Oswald continue checking everyone’s consciousness level, “just waking them up to ask, ‘You all right, you good?’ and hearing ‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ ” and other unprintable responses reflecting their annoyance at being awakened.
On the way back, the PJs pass medical information to the pilots, who radio it to the FST team at Bagram. The big concern on the ground is whether they’re coming in with anyone who is critical and needs immediate surgery. In this case, the report is that two of the patients have serious but not life-threatening injuries.
As a result of discussions that took place in the weeks following the death of the Australian SAS soldier whose vehicle had hit a mine, the PJs were able to carry whole blood—O-negative and O-positive—on their missions, and they have done so on this one. Fortunately it isn’t needed, because there is no room to administer it. Ethridge says, “The helicopter’s not the greatest place to do treatment. We’d rather sit down on the ground where no one’s shooting at us, let the helicopter go away, and then we can treat. Because then you can hear and use all your senses and treat properly. The helicopter yanking and banking, flying low, you can’t hear anything and it’s hard to see anything.”
What if one of their patients had started to crash?
“We’d make room, tell the helicopter to just go faster; do what we can if the guy starts going into cardiac arrest from trauma.”
The flight to Bagram is, fortunately, uneventful. Offloading the patients is not difficult. A number of Special Forces types come out to help, along with several of the pararescuemen assigned to special-tactics units. The PJs aboard the other helicopter have put the hypothermia patient in their Stokes litter, and while they are waiting for someone to bring the litter back out to the helicopters, Ethridge attempts to figure out whether his back will ever be the same again. He recalls, “I had body armor, vest—I had about fifty pounds on up there, just no ruck and no combat load. I had a lot of weight on top. And my back was—oooh!—I could barely move. Every time I’d start to put my chest forward, I could feel it. My back was shot.”
He doesn’t get much time to work the kinks out; they get orders by radio to refuel at Bagram and head directly back to where they started the mission, Texaco FARP. Moments after getting the order, a PJ comes racing back out to the helicopter on one of the quad all-terrain vehicles that’s part of their basic equipment. It turns out it is Jason Cunningham, who is still on loan to a special-tactics squadron following the Ditka 03 mission. Cunningham drops off the Sto
kes litter with the PJs in the other helo, waves at Caleb and Brian, and peels away on the tarmac, holding the quad on two wheels as he drives by.
On the flight back to Texaco, still wearing a bloodstained uniform in a bloody helicopter, Ethridge has time to reflect on what he’s just been through. “My back was hurting; I was tired. We flew a long time and I was just exhausted. I was thinking, ‘Dang, I can’t imagine doing this over and over again like the guys in Vietnam did.’ I started getting my first taste of how it would be if it were just all-out war. I knew what was going on was big. I knew it’d been a long time since something like that had happened. But I was just doing my job.
“I remembered when I first came into the Air Force, and an older guy at Lackland said to me, ‘Y’know, PJs have a cool job and do a lot of stuff. But when it comes to combat, they’re like small-town cops who never get to pull out their pistol and use it. Like Mayberry cops.’ He was saying that PJs help out civilians and do this and that, but they don’t ever get to shoot gangbangers or ever actually do anything. When I was at Nellis, and had all those deployments to the northern and southern no-fly zones in Turkey and Kuwait, I felt, ‘Shoot, I’m just a Mayberry cop. I’ve got all these weapons, but . . . ’ And that’s kind of the way it was for the PJs in the eighties, too. They didn’t see any real action—the raid on Panama and that was pretty much it.”
Now, at last, the PJs were doing more than civilian rescues at sea and on mountains in Alaska. They were in heavy combat, and for the most part taking it in stride. Pushed a bit, Caleb Ethridge reflects on their training and their emotional makeup. “They’re weeding you out during the indoc course and selecting you to make sure that when you’re out there and things are going on . . .” He pauses to think for a second. “Maybe it’s like a dumb pill they give. Maybe they figure out you’re not too bright. That’s the reason that PJs do it, too. Y’know, jump out of planes, all this stuff, go into a firefight and just ignore what’s going on. Duh-duh-duh. They help the guy, and they don’t look and go, ‘Dude, this is pretty jacked up.’ They need guys that have a screw loose, y’know? Guys who’re willing to go into this high-sea ocean and pick up someone they don’t even know.”
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