Photo by Spc. Austin Berner

The latest regurgitated story comes out of the Washington Post and I’d like to take a few moments to respond to this particular story since it incorporates many of the inaccuracies of the others.

But the rescue aircraft was unarmed, as are all Army medevacs. And the pre-dawn pickup zone in the Zhari district of Kandahar province was considered “hot,” or dangerous, meaning the medevac could not swoop in for the pickup until another chopper with firepower arrived to provide cover.

The reality of war is that troops are trained in lifesaving measures because, during combat, it won’t always be possible to extract the patient right away.  Even if the MEDEVAC bird were armed, it wouldn’t have “swooped in for the pickup” until the LZ was cleared.  The theory, I suppose, is that the armed MEDEVAC bird would seek out and destroy the enemy prior to landing and picking up its patients.

This, for those of us that have served in combat, is obviously nonsense.  Once a theoretically armed MEDEVAC lands to extract patients, those guns are no longer a viable presence.  Because they are door guns, the patients would very well be in the line of fire.  So, now you have an armed MEDEVAC chopper sitting there, with less space to carry passengers and fewer resources to treat patients, gunners idle.

Even arming MEDEVAC birds, they can’t travel alone.  They still need an escort.  So, assuming all MEDEVAC birds are armed, now you’re using TWO of them to extract patients instead of one with another armed platform.  This raises the risk that if another MEDEVAC bird is needed elsewhere, it won’t be available because it’s now providing cover for its own.

In Clark’s case, the military says there was a delay in determining whether any armed escort helicopters already in the air could be diverted to the scene. It’s unclear how long that lasted and whether it made a difference. Army officials said they could not disclose the time Clark died because of a policy not to reveal medical information about casualties.

This is always the case and happens with EVERY combat asset in the military inventory.  Any time an event occurs there are procedures in place to ensure that the right assets are used in responding to it.  In this case, as in all cases, the operators receiving the 9-line MEDEVAC request look to see which assets can get to the scene in the quickest amount of time.  Obviously, a chopper in the air is easier to divert than one that needs to dispatch a crew, run up the chopper, and take off – a process that takes an average 10 minutes (yes, even for MEDEVAC birds).

Unlike the Army medevacs, which are emblazoned with red crosses, the Air Force, Special Operations Command and the British fly search-and-rescue and medevac missions with armed aircraft. They do not have red crosses, which can be displayed only on unarmed aircraft, according to the Geneva Conventions.

Of all the things being written about this issue, this is the one that angers most Army troops and crew members.  Army MEDEVAC choppers have a completely different mission than the Air Force and Special Operations.  Hell, if we were going to base regular Army assets against everything Special Forces did, we wouldn’t need Special Forces!

The Air Force DOES NOT HAVE an organic MEDEVAC asset.  The Air Force is assigned the mission of CASEVAC.  Here is a great explanation of the difference between MEDEVAC and CASEVAC:

CASEVAC
CASEVAC uses non standardized and non dedicated vehicles that do not provide en route care. The service exists to transport casualties that are in dire need for evacuation from the battlefield and do not have time to wait on a MEDEVAC, or where a MEDEVAC is unable to get to the casualty. Essentially it is any helicopter or vehicle that can get into an area and evacuate an injured member with or without a medical crew and/or equipment.

According to AFTTP3-42.5  Casualty evacuation (CASEVAC), a term used by all Services, refers to
the movement of unregulated casualties aboard vehicles or aircraft.

MEDEVAC or DUSTOFF
The Army has a long history of medevac via helicopter starting with the 57th Medical Detachment back in 1962. The history of the DUSTOFF mission can be found on their website http://www.dustoff.org/history/history.htm

DUSTOFF is a standardized and dedicated vehicle providing en route care. They are traditionally on UH-1 Huey’s and UH-60’s Blackhawks. They can be easily identified with the Red Cross symbol on the nose and sides of the helicopter. One other identifiable mark with medevac’s is they do not have gunners aboard like the Air Force medics had. DUSTOFF medics are extremely skilled at what they do and are highly regarded as some of the best medics around. For more information about DUSTOFF, please visit www.dustoff.org.

According to AFTTP3-42.5 Medical evacuation
(MEDEVAC), on the other hand, traditionally refers to US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or
Coast Guard patient movement using predesignated tactical or logistic aircraft temporarily
equipped and staffed for en route care. MEDEVAC has generally implied the use of rotarywing
aircraft with medical attendants (MA).

Air Force Medevac
The Air Force doesn’t traditionally fill a medevac role but in 2006 the Army asked the Air Force to help with its medevac mission, it was considered an in-lieu-of deployment. The first medics that took on this responsibility were then TSgt Mark D. and TSgt Shawn B.. In order to fill the role, they needed to qualify on the helicopter and attend survival school.

Because the Air Force normally doesn’t carry out the medevac mission, it doesn’t have a helicopter designed for that purpose. This meant the flight medics had to make do with what they had, the HH-60 Pave Hawk, a helicopter the Air Force uses for combat search and rescue missions. It, too, is a distant relative of the Army’s Black Hawk.

So, to compare Army MEDEVAC assets to any other service is downright inaccurate, but to compare a single asset to a foreign military is just inventing reasons.  The article then continues, as do many others:

The Army boasts that a service member wounded in Afghanistan currently stands a 92 percent chance of surviving — the best rate of any war.

Clark was among the 8 percent who didn’t.

This is the part that is hardest to respond to.  As Soldiers and Marines, we live with the grim realization that we may not come back when we’re shipped to a war zone.  The entire point of war, after all, is to kill the enemy.  When it’s all boiled down, that is the goal.  The enemy has the same goal and we understand that we may die going where our country sends us.

Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t mean that we should accept every death as an unpreventable death.  But, the fact remains – in war, Soldiers die.  Marines die.  Airmen die.  Sailors die.  My brothers and sisters in arms die.  We lost a good friend in October, so I understand the pain of losing a loved one in combat.  There are a lot of questions from those left to deal with the void in their lives.

No one can say with any degree of certainty if Clark would have survived if the chopper got there 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes earlier.  Anyone that does should be worshipped for their godlike prognostication abilities. But, according to some troops on the ground, there was a great deal of doubt he would survive his injuries regardless of how quickly he made it to the hospital because of the severity of his wounds.

In Clark’s case, had the medevac been armed, it could have had Clark airborne and flying to a hospital within 12 minutes of his unit calling for a medevac, Yon said.

This is a patently false argument that anyone could easily counter.  It takes about that long just to dispatch a MEDEVAC to begin with.  The assertion that Clark could have been at the hospital within 30-35 minutes would be laughable if the subject matter weren’t so serious.  It took nine minutes just to pass up the first three lines of the 9-line MEDEVAC!  That means that the MEDEVAC crew would have had to gear up, start the chopper, run through the procedures and get to the LZ within 3 minutes to meet that assumption.  Impossible.

Here’s the main problem with the argument as it’s being presented: it’s too narrow and rigidly focused.  The argument only presents basically one solution – arm the MEDEVAC choppers.  This is an ill-conceived solution and ignores reality.

Think about it honestly.  How would removing the red crosses from the birds improve response time?  It won’t.  It won’t decrease or increase the amount of fire directed at it from the enemy.  The fact of the matter is that the Taliban doesn’t see a red cross and just automatically think, “hey, we can shoot at this one.  Come on guys!”  Contrarily, the Taliban don’t see a chopper without a cross and think, “hey guys, we better think twice about this one.“

The truth is that removing the crosses is simply the first step of the real agenda to arm MEDEVAC birds.  You can’t do that until you remove the crosses.  So, then the question becomes, will arming the MEDEVACs improve response time?  No, it won’t and here’s why.

Let’s say we arm MEDEVAC birds.  They will still need another chopper to get into hot LZs.  Where does that bird come from?  Is it just another MEDEVAC bird?  If that’s the case, now we’re dedicating two MEDEVAC birds to a mission which takes away that bird from other missions.  They still need to clear the LZ first so the bird is not landing, but buzzing the extraction site until it’s clear.  And that armed MEDEVAC, once it lands, becomes useless.  So, we’re back to square one. And if the bird gets shot down, you’ve just lost a very specialized piece of equipment and skill set in the troops inside.

Photo by Capt. Michael Lovas

The problem is that everyone is focusing so narrowly focused, we’re missing the big picture.  You will NOT find a single member of the military that doesn’t want to improve response time.  To a troop on the ground, MEDEVACs never get there fast enough. If they make in five minutes, they should have been there in four. Because every second we wait on the ground, our brother or sister is in pain and dying. Time ceases to move and minutes become hours in our minds.

This isn’t a matter of being fine with things the way they are.  If we’re meeting the 60-minute “Golden Hour” let’s try to achieve a 45-minute goal.  Then let’s work on 30, etc.  But, we have to be level-headed about this and not push for policies that are wrong-headed and premature.  These types of decisions are life and death.  We’re not playing video games over here.  We’re killing and being killed.

There are other options that aren’t being discussed.  For example, if we have forward deployed MEDEVAC units, why not have forward deployed attack choppers to escort them?  The problem then becomes you’re taking out attack aircraft from the battlefield to support the MEDEVAC mission.  Convert some MEDEVAC choppers to CASEVAC choppers.  Then, of course, you reduce the MEDEVAC capabilities on the battlefield.  Add more MEDEVAC and attack aircraft to the battle space.  Well, that goes against the government’s desire to draw down forces here.

You see, this isn’t a fly-by-night decision that needs to be made.  Options have to be weighed and risks assessed.  Believe me when I say that commanders want to bring all their troops home.  Medics want to save every casualty.  But, this is war and in war, people die.  The enemy gets a vote in how every plan goes into effect and we can’t always expect a perfect outcome.

The media needs to stop regurgitating what is fed to them and do some research on their stories.  This isn’t a two sided story.

Also, armed HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters equipped with door guns that were parked in Kandahar at the time could have picked up Clark and delivered him to a hospital in fewer than 35 minutes, he said. These helicopters often assist with medevac missions, but their primary mission is for personnel rescue and recovery.

This is patently false.  But even if true, ignore the fact that the military chooses the FASTEST mode of transport to an LZ.  Obviously, it was determined that if Pave Hawk helicopters were at KAF they weren’t as close as the MEDEVAC bird at the FOB.  However, this is just an assumption.  The author provides no evidence that any Pedros were at KAF ready to roll and relies upon assumptions.  But, let’s roll with the stories timeline of 35 minutes.

The first three lines took 9 minutes to communicate alone. Once that occurs, a unit is dispatched to respond. This conversation probably takes no more than 3-5 minutes. It’s a ten-minute flight at best from KAF to where Chazray awaited, not even counting the time it takes to get the crew to run out to the chopper and perform start-up procedures (the choppers don’t sit with the blades rotating and engines warmed waiting on a mission). That’s a 20-minute round trip. Let’s say that the team at KAF is the super-Pedro team of the world and they’re able to get on the flightline and get the chopper airborne in less than 5 minutes. It then takes a mere 2-3 minutes to get a patient in the chopper once they’ve landed. You’ve already busted the “fewer than 35 minutes” assumption and that’s with super-troop medics and top-notch pilots that have an auto-start button on their dogtags for their birds.

When a General Dempsey says that “it is a misperception that delays in evacuation are caused by the policy to mark MEDEVAC aircraft with red crosses,” he’s not lying.  He’s not being political and he’s not trying to hide anything.  The Army is the only Service that is dedicated to this essential mission.  It’s not contempt of congress and it doesn’t mislead the American to correct misrepresentations by both the media and independent journalists.

It also doesn’t help that these entities are convincing completely detached American citizens who know nothing about how this works other than what they told that they need to contact congressmen about something they themselves don’t fully understand.

This is one of those emotional issues that is easy to get people stirred about.  Some have used emotion to further their agendas with respect to this issue.  No American wants its sons or daughters dying needlessly and I can assure you (unofficially) that isn’t happening.

Many of these stories reference a video by Michael Yon as “proof” of his position.  However, the video is heavily edited and Mr. Yon has not released an unedited version to anyone.  Much of this argument would go away if the entire video was released, regardless of whether or not the White House or Pentagon refused a copy of it.  I suspect that there is a reason the entire video hasn’t been released to the media, bloggers, or other opponents of his argument.

In a lecture to colleagues, a Madigan Army Medical Center psychiatrist said a soldier who retires with a post-traumatic-stress-disorder diagnosis could eventually receive $1.5 million in government payments, according to a memo by a Western Regional Medical Command ombudsman who attended the September presentation

The psychiatrist went on to claim the rate of such diagnoses eventually could cause the Army and Department of Veterans Affairs to go broke (By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter).

We did not hit the lottery because we get this diagnosis, this in not a windfall or something special in terms of winning. The diagnosis for PTSD is not permanent as it suggests, we are subject to reviews yearly and can be called to come before the Compensation and Pension Board. The 100% rating is a living wage paid monthly to us while we heal, and some of us may never heal completely. Most of us do not get the 100% rating, to suggest that this is the normal ‘payout’ for this detrimental psychiatric wound is dead wrong. Most veterans diagnosed with PTSD carry a 30% rating, not much to live on.

The system is overloaded not because of fraud which research shows is under 1% at the VA; the problem is not veterans or soldiers trying to work the system. The problem is not taking care of our soldiers and veterans when they become symptomatic, its not taking them seriously when they get home. This type of culture in the military and the VA effectively keeps soldiers and veterans from getting help in the beginning when it would do the most good.

As axiomatic to veterans as the oath they swore to defend the U.S. Constitution is the reality that a veteran filing a disability benefit claim encounters the VA’s ‘deny-delay-and-hope-you-die’ culture (Micheal Leon, Veterans Today).

It is sad that the we are being labeled as malingerer’s again by another government organization trying to balance their budgets. I was called a malingerer to my face by nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and many people at the VA for the first 5 to 10 years due to a hostile culture towards veterans in the 90s in Louisville, KY (VA is better now in Kentucky). It was after the overwhelming evidence from the wreckage of my life I was finally diagnosed with PTSD in 2005 and received my 80% compensation in 2010.

I was actually service-connected in 2002 with hearing loss and tinnitus due to enemy artillery, but they had issues with reconciling my personal combat experience with the way Desert Storm was portrayed in the media; the myth that the First Gulf War was a bloodless conflict of buttons and smart-bombs. When I told them of the Highway of Death and driving seven (7) days without sleep, about what it looks like to see the world erupt in so much death in so little time; the 100 Hour Ground War was an enemy meat grinder. I was the Point Driver, an Mechanized Infantry Soldier leading our Main Battle Tanks to the enemy. My vehicle led 5,000 men into combat in the Biggest Tank Battle in the History of War. Driving in between explosions, mind screaming to go anywhere but here. I’m looking to move a brigade, not just myself. I am scanning the immediate ground and the terrain for the best movement for our unit, the landscape has a moon quality due to all the craters erupting from explosion after explosions. Their artillery was as good as ours, I hear it most days, boom, boom, boom in the distance, but when the detonation is near you can feel the meat in your body shake like jelly and you try and control your movements to keep going, no time to die.

We operated at exponentially high stress rates everyday of our deployments, living on the edge of life and death to serve our country and freedom. Knowing you should have died a hundred times can leave us numb to everything; our loved ones included. This country owes those who cannot cope with life or make sense of what we did and saw in combat; this may take decades. That is what we should focus on, how do we reduce the amount of time it takes to reconcile war trauma so that we may live without the red vistas of war spraying all over our reality today.

Any therapist or psychiatrist worth their salt can discern malingering, lets test them on that and not the veteran. To blame the soldiers or veterans just alienates them further and reinforces “If you go forward with asking for help then you cannot be trusted.” We loose 18 to 22 veterans a day to suicide, this culture of denial is killing more of our soldiers and veterans then the last 10 years of war, over 60,000 veterans to suicide in the last ten years. That’s not counting the suicide in the military.

Great blog!
I’ve been working with Combat PTSD Vets for 11 years. It brought up a couple things for me and I’d have to agree w/ the survey. There are out there what I call “Wanna bes”, which is about one or two percent of those I’ve worked with. However what sux is those 1 to 2 % ruin it for those who do have it and do need the benef

Cant help but note you have a sidebar the Support our Incarcerated Veterans. I was giving a lecture on how to start a PTSD program in confinement. Question from Head of Army Clemency & Parole Board: “How do you know if someone was where they say they was or was really deployed , where they say the are?”

My answere after I showed some assessment tools and and other ways I work to sort out the wannabes: When I’m counseling someone one I can notice the differnce in the way a person reacts when they say i was sniper andI 10 confirmed kills and he’s talking about it like, how aabout those Bears!” And The way a person describes what was like to be in the midst of a firefight have a buddy beed out in his arms and questioning himself, if i only would of … he night be alive today!” His affect, emotion and how he can barely get the words out with tears streaming down his cheeks.

I guess my answere wasn’t good emough because she went to the head man of military confinement and told him we could be misdiagnosing our guys and giving them clemeny & parole they might not desrve. So i walked into that shit storm after vi returned back to work after visiting my son who just returned from Afghanistan,

It also brought up a few more thought.

One) alot of GWI vets got the parades & then the period of thanks by America. You guys kicked thier ass, 100 days. Yee haa! How ever Non -military civilians don’t realize there was the build up. The war and worse yet the aftermath plus all the other factors oil well fires, death, chemicals, depleted uranium, anthrax shots etc. Then after the hoopla America forgot.

2)Then there was were you in direct combat how do we know what you saw can cause pTSD, lets detemine that with out the person asking the questions with being in war an its environment. How do you know what they saw? I’ve seen many veterans suffer in poverty while some idiot trys to figure this out and then come back & say, “We need more information. Or we can’t explain what you have because it hasn’t been given a name.”

3) Just like alcoholism not all cases of PTSD are not as severe as others, but does that mean a person does not have it. Who is qualified to say whose demons that haunt the soul of someone with PTSD, Combat Stress, Post Deployment Operational Stress Deployment what ever name one choses call it, is not as bad as his or hers.

Bottom line PTSD f’s one up physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Plus the loss of innoccence that the world is safe. These individuals gave ,so it is up to our country not to forget, be it in the honor or the compensation for those who gave while others sit on thier assess and decide if we should go to war or not.

Maybe the bean counters who send us to some wars we don’t need to be in should count the post cost of war and its devestation after the war. Before jumping into a war.

Thanks for all of you have served may you get the honor & the compensation you ddserve!

In the first two years after I got home, the only times I would cry would be in packed grocery stores. I didn’t cry in therapy until recently, after 15 years. I was always jacked up, emotional and confrontational even. Had I had a therapist who could have gotten past their petty reactions, a social worker less depressed then me or an empathetic practitioner who could have opened a therapeutic window so they may intuitively guide me through the landmine field residing in my consciousness in the first two years I may not have had a lifetime of emotional and spiritual pain. If you were looking for me to cry in therapy you would have labeled me a malingerer.

Second, the last post was not about a survey; it was about a memo from a therapist who gave an opinion based in his beliefs, not in facts or recent events such as the Veterans Administrations investigation. The Army took a reactionary response to a burnt out therapist who cannot get past thinking about the LESS than 1% and concentrate on the other 99 Combat Veterans who walk in the door. Thirdly, the less than 1% are not the issue that matters. Hold them responsible, yes. Tie their integrity to mine? I have issues with that. Their deception is not a good reason to jeopardize or threaten my benefits.

If we held financial institutions to the same standard we would not have banks or money. The research and investigations so far show a low fraud rate, to suspect every veteran who walks through the door is counterproductive to a healing environment and not grounded in evidence based science or facts.

Why are we talking about the ONE puke out of a hundred and attributing his behavior to veterans asking for help? That maintains the culture of disbelief in the military and the VA, and blocks the fostering of rapport building, a crucial first step in therapy. I have gone through dozens of therapist for many of these kinds of reasons. Right out of the gate I have always told the doctors and therapist what was going on with me as explicit in detail as I could about the flashbacks and what I was experiencing. Mostly I saw disbelief in their eyes, and many told me directly to my face that I was lying. Decades stacked up this way, I would not get help because a therapist had a idea of what to expect from a combat veteran.

I am usually very agitated and stressed in therapy sessions because I know I am going all in. I would probably seem excited to the person looking for it, but my anxiety level gets me all jazzed up talking about my combat experiences. There are many reasons why a combat veteran would seem excited or want to talk about their combat experiences to an empathetic therapist. For me, every time I went into therapy I was at my wits end, it is always kill myself or go and try and get help. So I spill my beans, all of them, I regurgitate the undigested contents of my emotional stomach. We assume therapists are empathetic, but from my experience most are not.

I went through so many hack therapists at the VA it is a joke, but let’s not talk about that real issue. They have their checklists and surveys to go by and cannot connect in a meaningful way to facilitate healing. A therapeutic window is the term used, whereby an empathetic connection between the therapist and client enables a safe place for exploration of traumatic events. I finally wound up with the department head as my psychiatrist and I will only see a therapist he recommends.

We are killing our veterans by treating everyone of them who walk in the door as though they are faking PTSD! We already know we will be treated as malingerers if we ask for help. One of the tasks for us sadly is finding a therapist who will not let their personal beliefs and issues leak into the therapy sessions.

The United States is one of the freest countries on the globe, but unless my sensibilities are entirely out of whack, I assert that this country—the country of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Calhoun, et al—is not nearly free enough. It isn’t even as free as we think. Can a man or woman truly live here according to conscience? At one time, we could have answered “almost certainly.” Today one’s conscience must be conformed in so many ways to so many things. We are not free, except in the most abstract, academic—and ultimately irrelevant—way. Our spirits are dying: death by a thousand pinpricks. Nay worse, a hundred thousand paper cuts from a faceless bureaucracy! Since Eden, there have been so many constraints on man anyway, without the added coercion of the muscular enforcers of state, whether they enforce the will of the few on the many—or the will of the many on the few! I just wish our government were less concerned for my welfare and more concerned for my freedom. I wish it were less concerned for this collective nonentity called “the people” and more concerned for every single individual, made in the image and likeness of God. I wish the government were less concentrated, had less power and authority, and were more respectful of the natural regions and the natural differences that exist amongst us. I don’t want to cooperate with everybody else, marching off into a global abyss. I JUST WISH THE GOVERNMENT WOULD LEAVE US ALONE.

Of course, you know what they say about wishing in one hand and picking up horse hockey with the other: one hand is likely to get fuller than the other. I reckon the wish must obtain a will and the necessary resources to in fact change things. God help us. Today the federal government literally employs extortion on the States with the money it taxes from us. To make you wear your seatbelt and do a hundred other things, the feds withhold funds from sovereign States, unless and until those States pass particular laws. They did the same thing after the War Between the States: permanent military occupation unless the States would approve certain constitutional amendments. The contexts are indeed different, and there were hard historical and practical realities to settle during the Reconstruction. But is another Robert E. Lee or Jeff Davis left anywhere in this unified, chained and tethered house of ours—locked down from the inside out? Is there a governor with backbone anywhere in the country to point out and even put an end to . . . (shall I name it? Are you willing to recognize it?). Tyranny.

Some of you will say, gosh he’s gone over the top (again). So you think, “I’m free, right?” Not if you think you ought to be in charge of the money you set aside for retirement, or the age you choose to retire. Not if you think you ought to be able to choose when your child goes to school, for how many weeks he or she should study, as well as what subjects. Walter E. Williams reviewed Sheldon Richman’s excellent new book, Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. In the review, he asks “What if you think your child is capable of having a job at age 12, as I was? No dice. The government determines the age at which one can work, and for how long and at what pay.” Andrew Jackson joined the American Revolution at the age of 14, and he was a natural soldier. I’m glad nobody told him No dice, Andy. (He probably would have killed somebody on our side). Of course, I’m not advocating enlistment of child soldiers—just pointing out the arbitrariness of well-meaning rules, forced and enforced down every throat in the country—where no one possesses the slightest degree of discretion and no State retains a sovereign prerogative.

Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Americans would face this kind of despotism, to which democracies are prone—more widespread and milder than other forms, degrading men rather than tormenting them. In his masterpiece Democracy in America, he writes that our leaders are likely to become as schoolmasters. Our government will try to keep us “in perpetual childhood” and will do this by providing security and necessities, assuming responsibility for our concerns, managing our work. He foresaw government, which “gladly works for [‘the people’s’] happiness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it.” Williams sums up his review with a very insightful comment, that “Democracy gives an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny.” Moreover, my fellow tethered citizens, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed, there is no one quite as hopelessly enslaved, as the person who thinks he is free but is not!

Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he serves as State Director of the Republican Freedom Coalition (RFC) and is currently running for U.S. Congress (TX-District 25) in the Republican Primary election scheduled April 3, 2012. This article is from his newly released book, Horse Sense for the New Millennium available on-line at www.WesRiddle.net and from fine bookstores everywhere.

We’re proud to announce that Military, Police, and Fire Men and Women will get free admission to this weekend’s Progressive International Motorcycle Show in NYC if they arrive in uniform!

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The Progressive International Motorcycle Shows. Remember, uniformed service men and women get in for free! Please let me know if you have any other questions or visit the official site to find out more information about the events: http://www.motorcycleshows.com/

The Army has released the following statement reference the MEDEVAC issue:

WASHINGTON (Jan. 20, 2012) — “Recent news items about the use of Army medical evacuation, or MEDEVAC, helicopters in Afghanistan contain troubling information. The reporting suggests that putting red crosses on MEDEVACs, and not arming them somehow, is putting injured Soldiers’ lives at risk. The facts do not support these assertions for several reasons.

First, there is no evidence, implied or proven, that the enemy deliberately targets MEDEVAC helicopters, but we know from hard experience that the enemy does try to shoot down any and all U.S. and coalition aircraft. Further, all helicopters in Afghanistan fly in pairs as a force protection matter. It’s the way we do business and to suggest that arming MEDEVAC aircraft would result in crews launching sooner is a dubious assertion.

Here are the facts: DOD has specifically tasked the Army, not any other service, to provide a standing MEDEVAC capability. The other services, as well as the Army in some cases, fly CASEVAC missions. This is a critical distinction. CASEVAC stands for Casualty Evacuation, which is a technical distinction that means they use whatever helicopters are available at the moment to extract the wounded or downed aircrews. However, DOD has tasked the Army to provide evacuation to the MEDEVAC standard, which means our MEDEVAC crews and helicopters are purpose built, manned, trained and equipped to provide advanced trauma care in flight.

While putting a red cross on our MEDEVAC helicopters has the added benefit of being consistent with the Geneva Conventions, it also marks that aircraft and crew for no other mission besides medical evacuation. In Afghanistan and other austere environments, where helicopter assets are in very high demand, it’s important that we dedicate a fleet of aircraft for no other purpose than to provide advanced in-flight care for wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines.

The Army provides the great majority of medical evacuations in Afghanistan. That includes allied personnel and even enemy wounded. The U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, and in Iraq before that, specifically asked for the Army to provide medical evacuation of its personnel because they know we provide the “gold standard” in modern battlefield evacuation. No military force in the world is better than the US Army at MEDEVAC. The 92 percent survival rate for wounded in Afghanistan is the highest in history because of the power of our MEDEVAC capability and its battlefield support network.

Another important point is that arming our MEDEVACs would significantly impact the capability of the aircraft. Machine guns, related mounting equipment, ammunition and the gunners all add weight to the aircraft. The added weight would hinder the aircraft’s ability to work at higher altitudes because of reduced lift, as well as its speed and range. Additionally, MEDEVACs can carry up to four litter patients, but if weapons were added, that number would be reduced, which would in turn require the commitment of more MEDEVAC aircraft, an already low density and high demand asset.

Further, arming MEDEVACs would not reduce the need for armed escort. Again, our aircraft travel in pairs. The decision to use escort is the tactical commander’s, and the Army does not dictate how or when it is necessary to use these assets.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the Army would change its policy if battlefield commanders wanted a change. We take our obligation to perform the MEDEVAC mission very seriously. We’re a learning organization and periodically we review our policies to make sure they remain relevant. We looked at the MEDEVAC policy in 2008, but after a review, we determined no change was necessary.

Additionally, neither the International Security Assistance Force or U.S. Forces – Afghanistan has requested a change in policy; because our MEDEVAC crews and aircraft provide the best chance at survival ever seen in warfare, and because — as commanders in Afghanistan have told us — not arming our MEDEVACs and identifying them with the red cross has had no impact on the medical evacuation mission.”

This post is my personal opinion and not representative of the Army, the Department of Defense, The United States Government, the 82nd Airborne Division, the 3rd Infantry Division, III Corps, the 101st Airborne Division, the 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade, the 511th MI Company, the School of the Americas, ISAF, RC(S), RC(E), RC(N), RC(W), CENTCOM, TRADOC, FORSCOM, Recruiting Command, The United States Marine Corps, the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, The United States Coast Guard, The Boy Scouts of America, the Department of Education, or any other unit, department, office, Section, squad, platoon, company battalion, brigade, division, Corps, any branch of service, rank, MOS, or any other segment of official military or government, real or imagined.

Along with the mental health issues where I perform the equivalence of aerial acrobatics in a paper airplane with an elephant pilot. Yeah, go read that again.  I have recently started taking a new anti-depressant, Lexapro to help with the seasonal depression which buffers the chronic depression this last year. Since I have a “sensitivity” to such medications I get the distinction of trying novel and ‘off label’ usage of medications. Or I get to be first again, leading the way with taking new medications where hundreds of thousands of veterans will go!

The year 2011 was a year of grieving and mourning; I went into an inpatient PTSD program in Memphis, TN. Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a tremendous tool I was able to learn and apply to novel ways of processing my war trauma. Long story short, I was able to reconcile and mourn 5 marine deaths. In doing so it unblocked a flood of mourning for my grandmother, mother, father and friends who had died since 1991. The year 2011 was the year I took my soul back.

Other symptoms of the Combat PTSD Veteran? Toxic levels of stress hormones and chemicals in the body can cause muscle and nerve damage over years from constant flooding of the body.  Stomach ulcers, acid re-flux and chronic bowel problems.  Then there are the side effects from the medications starting with erectile dysfunction to treat chronic PTSD and the depression that goes with it (I take 9, down from 15 two years ago). If you or a loved one is not on top of your medications they can kill you!

Speaking of family and loved ones. We have the propensity to push everyone away and many of us will alienate the people we need the most. Combined with a sense of loss of community, no wonder we are still loosing veterans at a rate of 18 a day.  I have the gift of hindsight for all the good it does me in repairing some relationships, if I can manage to keep dodging those land mines! Yeah, the flashbacks. We don’t talk about those for two reasons; one because they scare the hell out of us and two, most of us don’t have the language to describe it (I do, drop me a line).

Keep coming back,

Scott

For those of you who don’t know me, I go by a couple of writing handles and identities; Roman General and most recently Combat PTSD Blogger on Facebook. I started writing at PTSD: A Soldier’s Perspective in 2007 and in 2008 CJ contacted me to begin writing here. He asked me to come back to keep the conversation moving forward on Combat PTSD.

I have lived with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder for 20 years following the First Gulf War in 1991. It affects me daily; hallucinations both audio and visual depending on my stress level and the dissociative features strewn about for effect.

Many myths surround this conflict and part of my mission is dispel the media portrayal of it as a war of buttons and bombs. It was the largest tank battle in the history of war and we fought an enemy that died to the man. My brigade was credited with over 20,000 enemy casualties in the 100 Hour Ground War and I drove on point.

Join me here where I will chronicle my life and how Combat PTSD relates to my everyday existence.

Thank you,

Scott Lee

Troops on the ground, Regional Command (South), ISAF, CENTCOM, and the Department of the Army. What do they have in common? They agree that the efforts by those to stigmatize the red crosses on MEDEVAC choppers is a non-issue.

In a recent letter to Senator Grassley posted on Michael Yon’s website, Secretary of the Army John McHugh confirmed what I’ve been educating readers on all along – that “Army MEDEVAC aircraft are manned with specially trained crewmembers and are uniquely equipped with medical equipment to provide critical in-flight medical care,” something that Pedros, Air Force and Marine CASEVAC choppers are NOT “uniquely equipped” to provide.

This issue started as an effort to arm MEDEVAC choppers, but the obvious realization that adding guns, ammo, and shooters to these assets would cause medical capabilities to suffer the conversation turned to a ridiculous argument that red crosses are looked at as some sort of homage to the Crusades or that they violated Geneva Conventions. Not sure which is more laughable.

U.S. Army Spc. Carl Jenson from Sierra Vista, Ariz., assigned to 3rd Platoon, The “All American” Dustoff, 82nd Airborne Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, N.C., writes down the patient’s information while flying over Wardak province, Afghanistan, Dec. 19, 2011.

The reason that the Air Force, Marines, British, and Army Special Operations Forces do not use the Red Crosses is because they do not have a dedicated MEDEVAC mission. This seems to constantly get lost in the translation as various people easily influenced by the gentle breeze of shifting winds of conspiracy contact Congress demanding answers to a riddle that’s already been solved. Or better yet, a riddle that didn’t need to be solved.

As Secretary McHugh rightly noted in his response to Senator Grassley, the truth is that these unarmed MEDEVAC choppers consistently “evacuate urgent point of injury patients to the appropriate level of care within one hour of receiving the MEDEVAC mission.” These choppers do not, as some would try to indicate, sit on the ground waiting for armed escort. As a matter of fact – and something specifically pointed out by ISAF in response to this issue a few months ago – even the mission that precipitated this irresponsible call to action didn’t wait on any armed escort.

U.S. Army Spc. Carl Jenson from Sierra Vista, Ariz., assigned to 3rd Platoon, The “All American” Dustoff, 82nd Airborne Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, N.C., writes down the patient’s information while flying over Wardak province, Afghanistan, Dec. 19, 2011.

Another misleading argument used by the crusaders trying to remove the red crosses from our MEDEVAC choppers is that such symbols are targeted by the enemy. Well, guess what. If the enemy targets our MEDEVAC choppers they are decimated by the accompanying Apache attack helicopter with its 30-millimeter chain gun, Hydra 70 rockets and hellfire missiles. Guess what else. These Apaches have 360 degree visibility of the surrounding area and a longer range than anything a Blackhawk MEDEVAC bird would be armed with. Any added defensive or offensive systems would only have a 90 degree effectiveness on each side and could hinder evacuations or cause additional injuries if the evacuation happens to be in the line of fire of enemy troops.

In reality, the vast majority of LZs for MEDEVAC birds are cleared by the time the chopper arrives. So the argument that every single MEDEVAC bird is somehow an enemy target is a farce. No one will argue that the enemy will target support assets, including medical personnel and equipment. But, the irresponsible suggestion that our MEDEVACs are under constant fire is simply inaccurate at best and an outright misrepresentation at worst. Even in the situation that precipitated this campaign to arm MEDEVACs and remove crosses, the LZ was completely secured with ABSOLUTELY ZERO direct fire enemy engagements.

No one is “passing the MEDEVAC” buck on this issue. The fact is that everyone except a select few individuals who are losing relevance are keeping this issue alive. It’s been all the way to the White House and throughout the DOD and combat theater and no changes are being made. That should say something quite profound to those that continue to fight this issue.

I want to do everything possible to keep my fellow brothers and sisters alive that I serve with here in Afghanistan. This is an issue on which few people involved disagree with me. I’ve got another meeting with a different MEDEVAC unit on Saturday, but I suspect to get the same response to this issue as I have with the two other teams I’ve contacted about it: “What are you talking about? The way we do things is just fine. Adding weapons would take up needed space and prevent mass casualty evacuation that we’re equipped for.”

U.S. Army Capt. Adam Ellington from Cedar City, Utah, assigned to 3rd Platoon, The “All American” Dustoff, 82nd Airborne Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, N.C., finishes shutting down his UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter, Forward Operating Base Shank, Logar province, Afghanistan, Dec. 19, 2011.

And with that, I’m done. I’ve said all there is to say.

I just received this from Connor in one of my care packages and just wanted to share it. This little man is so inspiring and I hope to meet him in person one day. I sent him one of our flags a few months ago as thanks, but even that just seem to equal what we get.