Word: medevac
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...blast a landing zone the next day. Meanwhile the most seriously wounded were hoisted through the trees in wire baskets by rescue choppers hovering overhead. At first light next morning, seven more chain saws attacked the jungle, and at 10 a.m. the clearing was big enough for one MEDEVAC chopper at a time to flutter down and carry out the remaining casualties...
...takes plenty of heart as well as guts, and the MEDEVAC teams are known throughout South Viet Nam as "the gamest bastards of all." Their deep-chested, $250,000 "Huey" choppers (capacity: ten patients each) have evacuated 8,864 wounded troopers-, Vietnamese and American-since...
...Place for Sentiment. With 40 other pilots and crewmen of MEDEVAC (for medical evacuation team), Bloomquist has one of the most taxing and perilous assignments in South Viet Nam. Cruising above the battlefields in search of the wounded, MEDEVAC's helicopters fly a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, every week of the year. In 18 months of duty in South Viet Nam, burly, green-eyed Major Bloomquist, 32, has flown 750 combat missions, been wounded three times, won 27 citations...
...process, he has rescued 800 wounded soldiers and carted home more corpses than he cares to remember. To help counter the pervasive stench of death and mutilation, MEDEVAC pilots and crewmen stuff their nostrils with Vicks VapoRub. And they are curiously unwilling to make friends with infantrymen. "You don't want to get too close to people when you know tomorrow they may be dead," Bloomquist explains. "There's no place for sentiment in this business...
...Bloomquist grimly says: "The red cross makes us that much better a have been higher but for the consummate skill of the MEDEVAC pilots. During one recent battle, Bloomquist found himself swooping in behind four fighter-bombers to pick up seven wounded Americans. Suddenly one of the escorting Skyraiders burst into flames from a ground hit, and its partners peeled away to protect it. All alone, Bloomquist's chopper-call sign "Dust-off 174"-touched down amid wither ing crossfire from Viet Cong .50-cal. machine guns. Bloomquist ordered his crew to load the wounded, calmly polished his sunglasses...