Samuel Diehl, a recent graduate of James Madison University in Virginia and also a pilot in the unit, says the there are two types of injuries he typically encounters. Within eight minutes, the chopper will be on its way to evacuate the injured.įirst Lt. Within three minutes, Rone will rush to runway to power up the Blackhawk along with the lead pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Alex Bonilla. "If a soldier survives the attack, after the first couple of minutes, as long as they're transported to a facility within that hour, their chances of survival are over 95 percent," Rone said. Mary Rone, from Berkeley, Calif., the only female pilot in the unit, is rustled from a deep sleep and rushes to the operations center. He shouts "MEDEVAC! MEDEVAC! MEDEVAC!" into the two-way radio. It's at this moment that the clock starts ticking and the "Golden Hour," an emergency medicine concept, begins.Ī dispatcher inside the operations center grabs a walkie-talkie to alert the crew on call to get moving. A hole in his back may be an exit wound from a chest injury." Their mission is simple: Evacuate anyone injured on the battlefield as quickly as possible.Ībout every half hour, especially at night, an alert comes in.Īn instant messaging system that's attached to an electronic voice blares out the latest injuries in a staccato "Speak & Spell" voice: "LN2 has shrapnel all over the body. The unit works out of a remote corner at Balad Air Base, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Army medical center in Landstuhl, Germany.Īt around midnight, the radio traffic gets heavy inside Eagle Dustoff's operations center.ĭustoff is an Army medevac unit made up of 90 soldiers and 12 Blackhawk helicopters. Finally, Part Three - which airs Friday on Morning Edition - will follow an injured soldier to a U.S. Part Two, which airs on All Things Considered Thursday, will examine the air force hospital at Balad Air Base, one of the most advanced combat field hospitals in the history of warfare.
RADIO COMMANDER MEDEVACS SERIES
Part One of the series starts on Morning Edition Thursday with a look at an Army helicopter unit that flies to the battlefield to rescue those injured. NPR's Defense Correspondent Guy Raz presents a three-part series on critical care in the war zone. It's a cycle that sometimes takes just a few hours. Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, thousands of miles away. Once a serviceman or woman is injured, they enter a kind of conveyer-belt of treatment that begins with an evacuation from the battlefield to the trauma ward at Balad Air Base. It's the highest survival rate in the history of warfare. In Iraq and Afghanistan, troops who are wounded in an attack have a 95 percent chance of surviving.
troops have been injured in Iraq - about half of them with permanent disabilities.
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