Always on Alert

Well, again due to network issues I have been unable to get into my blog for nearly a week. It's been a very busy week, though. On Monday, I was scheduled to do an instrument flight with the Commanding Officer. Normally instrument flights are about as exciting as waching paint dry. Fate had something entirely different in mind for us that particular afternoon. We were just finishing up our startup checks when base called us over the radio. There was a car accident along one of the highways just outside of the base. They wanted us to go fly overhead and take a look at it. Ironically, the flight surgeon was scheduled to fly with us that day. Anyway, we took off and got coordinates to the crash scene. We flew over it once and didn't see anything too dramatic, but they called us and told us to land and pick up one soldier to medevac to the hospital. We landed in the desert next to the crash sight and then realized how bad it had been. The soldier we picked up had some minor injuries, but the other soldier in the car was DOA. It really stuck in my mind the entire flight down to the hospital. I had to really concentrate on keeping my head in the task at hand. The soldier who died was stationed at the same base I am and there will be a memorial service on Saturday for him.

The next day I was actually on the alert and we got launched twice. The first one was a soldier being evac'd from up north. He was transferred from the other medevac helicopters into ours here and then we took him down south. I don't know what he had, but he was walking. The other call came at 0445. My dreams were interrupted so that we could fly as wing to go up north and pick up a soldier heading south. Thankfully, we only had to tag along for the first portion of the flight so I was back in bed by 0600. Then yesterday I got to fly a very chill training flight out over the desert. Good times were had by all.