I think I've had enough of this hero stuff....

I don't mind getting yanked out of bed at 2 am. It's what I'm here for. The problem was that after I got back to my room at 4 am, I could not get my brain to shut down. Everything about that mission just bothered me. I couldn't just let it go...kept mulling it over and over- each time realizing more and more acutely how dangerous our job is and how many of those limits we had to push to evacuate this guy. It got me more and more upset. I've just begun a 30 day countdown to returning home, and the other 3 guys on my crew are all on the 14 day countdown! This is NOT the time to mix ALL the hazards into one flight and hope we come out OK.

It was pitch black, no illumination to help our goggles. Once we took off, I realized that we couldn't see ANYTHING except a few mountain tops- but no perception of how close or how high they were. Ground was invisible. We had cloud layers and rain obscuring our vision, mountains to pass over, the dustiest landing zone to get into. It was impossible. Nothing 'felt' right about what we were trying to do, other than knowing that we were the only option to evacuate this guy and save his life. And our chase crew- because it was so dark- ws sticking close to my tail...too close. I was wondering what I'd do if they ran into me! Found the LZ ok, but that wasn't reassuring. It took me 3 passes at the landing zone to try and figure it out. It was too dark and dusty to have any depth perception or judge my rate of closure. I was 0 for 3, so Damien came on the controls and gave it his best shot. Took another 2 passes to get any real idea of what we were getting into. He wasn't comfortable with it either.

The poor guy on the ground spinning his 'buzzsaw' (infrared chemlight on a string) probably thought that we weren't landing because we couldn't see him, or he wasn't doing his job well enough. So each pass we saw him spinning that thing with all his might- and walking himself closer to the LZ to make sure we saw him. Poor guy- his arm had to be exhausted by the time we made the half-dozen attempts.

I think the stress of last night, and the fact that each of us, on our own, had resigned ourselves to the fact that 'Well, this may be it...this may be THAT flight...." made us all kind of somber throughout the day. Only at dinner tonight did we finally bring the topic up...cautiously at first- tactfully probing the issue. Once the floodgates were open, we sat there for an hour or so, and loudly and charismatically relived every detail, expressing exasperation, disbelief, shock and incredulation about what we had survived. It was therapeutic to have it retold from each crewmembers perspective and realize that we each were seeing and feeling the same concerns. Then it evolved into "so no kidding...there I was..." stories about ALL the scariest missions, landings, incidents we had all been in. Realized that we had been dealing with these same risks the entire time, but that our perspective had changed now that we were so close to going home.
I just hope everyone out there is being safe and cautious