elcome to our personal “Dustoff” page! The essence of this page is very integral to our web site as the tenets of leadership were formulated during the 12 months that I served as a Dustoff (helicopter aeromedical evacuation) pilot in Vietnam.

There is little value gained out of war other than stopping the aggressor if you happen to be the one being aggressed upon. Each of us who survived the Vietnam War (note the term conflict is not used) hold different perspectives and lessons learned from our individual experiences. These perspectives and lessons have shaped the person that I am today.

Medical evacuation of wounded personnel from the battlefield has always been a paramount objective for ground commanders. The time it takes the soldier to reach an appropriate medical treatment facility is controlled by the means of evacuation (ground or air), weather, terrain and distance. In W.W.II, aircraft were used for limited evacuation and in Korea, the helicopter gained acceptance as a means of evacuation. In both cases though, evacuation was from one medical facility to another and not from the site of the battle. The Vietnam War, for all of the negativity that it imparted, was an arena for the growth of technology. Helicopter development grew tremendously both in capability and how it was deployed on the battlefield. When the “GI” finally got his hands on the helicopter, individual and collective creativity took over and added to the capability of the helicopter through a variety of modifications—some approved, some ad hoc.

As a Dustoff pilot, the helicopter gave us the capability to go from our field site to the battlefield, extract the wounded soldier(s) and return to an advanced medical facility within the golden hour. This created a high probability that a life could be saved that would otherwise have been lost. The range of injuries that we saw extended from the minor illness that would prevent a soldier from operating in the field to the most extreme that a person could ever imagine—far more horrendous than we see on “ER” at night.

As a pilot designated to serve in a Dustoff unit, I was assigned to four weeks of specialized aeromedical training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas immediately after graduation from Warrant Officer flight training in November 1968. The emergency medical training was very comprehensive in regards to understanding traumatic injuries, what to expect with those injuries and what steps were necessary to stabilize a patient until they could reach the proper medical facility. We also had a fair amount of hands on training in first responder treatment for combat injuries. Four weeks is four weeks which means we were not equipped or trained for medical treatment beyond initial life saving and patient stabilization.

The first flight instructor that I had in flight school, Kenneth Haake, told me that my aviator wings were only a license to learn more about flying. Even though I thought I was a “hot pilot”, in retrospect I did not know squat about being a combat pilot. My experience in flight school, all 220 hours were only a “license” to experience the world of flight. After my first combat mission in January 1969 flying out Lai Khe, I felt like I had never been to flight school and was not prepared for what we experienced in treating combat injuries. Feeling like a dumb ass provided time for reflection as to how I got myself there in the first place and whether or not I had the right stuff to survive the 12 month tour.

The learning curve was nearly vertical for new pilots to acquire the skills to perform unarmed, single aircraft missions, in all terrain, weather and ambient conditions. The majority of my early flying was under the tutelage of Stephen Plume, another Warrant Officer. Steve was the kind of guy that could be freshly showered, dressed in a fresh pair of starched fatigues with shined boots only to look like he slept in his uniform for a week. Never saw the guy flustered even when he came back from a week long field standby mission to find that his hooch (living quarters) had burned down along with all of personal possessions.

Steve taught me the art of flying hoist missions, hovering over a 100 foot jungle canopy, lowering a jungle penetrator down through the trees and extracting the wounded soldiers. Over the 12 months, I flew 61 hoist missions—60 more than I cared to fly. At night, they were extremely challenging. And they became more challenging at night when the cable wouldn't retract back into the hoist. This necessitated hovering straight up (with no visual reference to the ground and or horizon since it was pitch black outside) for 100 feet while bringing the soldier who was strapped to the jungle penetrator up through the trees without injuring him further. With the patient dangling 100 feet below the aircraft, we had to fly to a landing zone, set the soldier on the ground, load him in the aircraft along with the hoist cable and then fly to the nearest medical facility. Some times we had gunships to provide cover, other times we were on our own.

I also flew with Steve in the Delta which necessitated some different flying skills. Steve taught me the valuable lesson of crew coordination and using each crew member’s input for decision making in order to successfully complete the mission. What Steve taught me saved my ass time and time again. So wherever Steve is today, my hat is off to him and I owe him an ice-cold beer, or two or three when I see him again.

As I have expressed to many different audiences, serving as a Dustoff Pilot was certainly an “E-Ticket Ride”. There was a great deal of excitement and satisfaction from having cheated death and successfully completed a mission where we survived to fly another day. Most of our day was spent with an adrenaline rush ongoing. There was great camaraderie among the crewmembers—warrant officers and enlisted men. We seemingly flew the aircraft on the ragged edge of the performance envelope all of the time. Since I survived my tour, I am not sure whether I ever found the edge of performance envelop although I can attest that I had shaky knees and a tension headache after many such missions. We continually tested our skills, learned new ways of flying the aircraft and learned to short out the “B” from the “S” when working with commanders. Ground commanders would tell us anything to get us to land and evacuate their wounded.

Along with the elation of having survived another mission came the sadness and despair at losing fellow crew members and having to watch a soldier’s life flow out on to the floor of the helicopter and being unable to change his outcome. At the end of the day, we always had to wash the inside of the aircraft to remove the blood and dirt that had accumulated after many hours of flying. How the crew chiefs and medics were able to retain some level of sanity is beyond my comprehension.

In the opening paragraph of this page, I made the statement that the purpose of Tsunami Enterprises was conceived as a result of my experience in Vietnam. Within our consulting business, the most significant part focuses on leadership. I learned a great deal about teamwork, responsibility, accountability, the creed of your word is your honor, respect and dignity. The command climate within the 45th Medical Company during my tour didn’t foster these same principles. The commander and his staff considered the enlisted men to be second class citizens. They were treated without respect or dignity. Warrant Officers were lodged in the gray area between being a commissioned officer and an enlisted man. The commanders didn’t really know how to lead a group of young Warrant Officers who averaged 21 years in age who cared little for the structure of the military and the noxious rules which impeded completion of their assigned missions. From the individual perspective, the mission was optimal and the environment allowed me to grow and learn more about myself. The unfortunate side is that we probably could have learned more about leadership and life in general had the command climate fostered this type of growth.

If you have been evacuated by a medical helicopter, I hope that you appreciate what the flight crew probably endured to get you to the best medical treatment possible. If you have a loved one that died on the battlefield, I hope that you to appreciate the fact that there was an active group of people beginning with the ground commander, the unit medics as well as the helicopter crews trying their best to save your loved one’s life.