So we're not completely useless...
Those quiet inner thoughts have been fighting back and forth, debating what could be going on in the world that would cause this predicament. We knew Ramadan had come and gone. Perhaps the Marine unit that just replaced the older one hadn't gotten up to speed yet and wasn't launching operations yet. Maybe ISAF had finally started forcing some of the other nations' aviation forces to pull their weight and were diverting all the recent MEDEVAC requests to them. I worried that perhaps our aviation task force had developed a bad reputation, and they didn't want the hassle of dealing with us, and thus avoided the headache of going through our approval process. Then there is the ever-present consolation that the Lord was most likely protecting me from myself, mechanical failures in mid-flight, or the threat of surface fire. He knows alot more about the situation out there than I do. We knew MEDEVAC requests were coming down. The all get vetted through the single source of the medical staff at RC South. We just weren't getting assigned the missions. But all things pass...
We have been spun up on several, only to get orders to stand down just as we were preparing to launch. Yesterday, we actually got off the ground first. We were about half way to the site when we received the text message via satellite to our GPS tracking system:"Mission Cancelled. RTB."
We preach the 'Golden Hour'- a statistic which shows that your chances of survival increase exponentially if you receive surgical intervention within 1 hour. Unfortunately, some only have a golden half-hour, or in this man's case a golden 10 minutes. He succumbed to his wounds before we could reach him. We were grateful, that even in this situation, we were at least given the chance to try to save him.
Tonight we had another opportunity to shake off the cobwebs and feel like contributing members of this orchestra. Call came in the middle of the night (again validating our nocturnal habits). A Marine at a spot we had been to frequently before, had a knife wound with arterial bleeding (squirting) and a tourniquet was in place (= clock is ticking). We were off the ground with the speed and precision that comes from running up several times- but found that actually flying was a bit more elusive. The moon hadn't fully crested the horizon and it was still very dark. Only subtle differences in the shades of green in our NVGs distinguish the ground from the sky. We had planned to fly between 200 and 300 feet this time, but found ourselves occasionally at 120 and up to 1000. Yeah, we're a bit rusty. By the time we arrived at the LZ, the moon was up enough to clearly see the ground and we had another speedy, successful pick up. Performing your mission successfully does wonders for a group's morale, confidence and sense of purpose. I am refreshed.