'Dustoff' crews featured in documentary

AUSTIN (KXAN) - At an airfield in Afghanistan, a tall Army major addresses his troops.

There is in his voice, a solemn air, an earnestness that soaks up the attention of the pilots, crew chiefs and medics he commands. As Austin documentary filmmaker Pat Fries rolls his camera, Maj. Patrick Zenk is delivering a history lesson about another time, another war:

July 1, 1964, Vietnam.

“ Charles Kelly was the first Dustoffer killed in action,” Zenk lectured. “There was enemy fire in the area. He landed his aircraft and immediately they began to take volleys of fire.

“The ground forces on the ground told him, ' Dustoff, get out of here! Leave!'

“And he said, 'I'll leave when I have your wounded.’ The next words he spoke were, 'My God,' as the bullet passed through his chest and he died. And that's the legacy we carry today.”

A legacy of dangerous rescues

Zenk carries the legacy of harrowing helicopter rescues of wounded troops in an even more personal way. His own father, a second lieutenant during Vietnam, also served on a Dustoff crew, so named for the dust kicked up by the helicopters.

Unlike Kelly, Lt. Zenk survived and lived out the rest of his life as a pharmacist back in the States.

But his son made a career out of the dangerous work of piloting unarmed choppers into battlefield situations to get wounded troops to safety.”

“The family legacy was so unique, that we couldn't pass it up,” said Fries “To be able to fly with him and to see his passion and to know the family connection with saving lives on the battlefield was just a great story. And Pat opened his arms and welcomed us over there. That made the difference.”

For all its “greatness,” it was a story far beyond the reach of many journalists. Fries, however, was determined.

“You have to be in good physical shape,” he said. “You've got to have a lot of insurance. You're going into combat, so the military is very careful about who they allow on the battlefield.

“Aside from that, it's just a lot of paperwork; it's very expensive, complicated; it takes a long time.

“And you have to find somebody willing to accept you as a journalist. You know, you can't just walk on the battlefield. So you have to have somebody who says, ‘Hey, I want you to come tell our story.’”

So the filmmaker had his ticket. His wife and daughter understood the importance of the story and gave the trip their blessing.

Quest to understand combat

But for Fries, there was more to it all than just telling a compelling story about brave and selfless soldiers. He wanted to go to war, if only for a little while.

“You know, I think every cinematographer looks for an opportunity to capture something that nobody else can get,” said Fries. “I've filmed almost everywhere else in the world, but never in combat. And it's always been a dream of mine to kind of understand and experience combat, you know, first hand. And it was just something I couldn't pass up.”

When he arrived in Afghanistan, Fries was given just two rules: Stay right behind the medic on the missions, even stepping in his footsteps to avoid the improvised explosive devices, or IEDs in military parlance, that are often the cause of troop injuries, and when the chopper is ready to take off from the battlefield, be inside it.

If you’re not, be prepared to be left behind in the company of a patrol of U.S. Marines who are surly, angry and deeply worried about the fellow Marine they just put on the Dustoff chopper. Fries was warned those guys would be in no mood to baby-sit a witless photographer from Austin, Texas.

Then there was the process of warming up to the Dustoff crews, themselves.

“When you're a journalist in a combat zone and you want people to talk to you, they're not going to talk,” Fries learned. “They're not going to tell you how afraid they are. They're not going to tell you how much they miss their family. They're not going to open up until they really trust you.

“And you know, that's the moment when I felt like I was accepted, is when they started to talk to me about their real fears and how they really felt about things.”

So what made the difference? How did Fries convince a group of people performing gut-wrenching, dangerous work in a place so remote there was no such thing as television or actual beds, that they should open up to a stranger?

“I was up earlier than they were every single morning,” he recalled. “I was there until sunset. I flew every single mission. I never complained. They didn't have to help me with anything. I was no drain on them.”

In fact, Fries even wound up helping the Dustoffers. The first time that happened came early in his month-long deployment.

“I was in the back of the aircraft and they loaded in a civilian who was pretty severely injured,” the photographer said. “And the medic was intubating him and had to get busy putting in an IV and he couldn't continue to intubate.

“I was filming and the next thing I know, the medic's, you know, yelling at me, 'Hey, you got to pitch in.' So, of course,

I put down the camera and, you know, helped out.”

Managing the fear of going to war

When he wasn’t assisting the medics, though, Fries was doing his job, relentlessly.

“I think the fear for everybody that goes to, you know, Afghanistan, as a journalist,” he said, “is not that you'll be killed, but that you might end up like many of the Marines that are coming back, without your legs or without an arm or your eyes. You know, that's the real horrific part of that war.

“It's just a dangerous place to be and you're flying in helicopters into places where somebody else has already been shot or stepped on an IED. And here you are, coming just moments after that's taken place, and you're outside the aircraft.

“You know, you can't take pictures from inside the cocoon; you've got to get out with the medic. You got to go, you know, you got to go where they're going or don't bother going at all.”

Through it all, Fries saw what the Dustoffers saw and it was not easy to see. Most of the wounded were U.S. Marines. But the crews also rescued injured Taliban fighters.

Perhaps the hardest duty was picking up wounded Afghan civilians, especially the children. Fries says he saw instances in which the Taliban laid traps for the Dustoff crews.

“The civilians in Afghanistan know that if there's an injury,” he said, "if a child's injured of if there's a car accident, if they take that individual to the nearest Marines patrol or a small Marine base out in the middle of the desert, the Marines will call for Medevac and the Medevac will be there within 15 minutes and get that civilian to the hospital.

“So they already know that's going to happen; they've just got to find the Marines and it's not hard to find a Marine in Afghanistan.”

But the civilians are not the only ones who know that. The Taliban do, as well.

“They will personally injure civilians, children mainly, so that they know that a helicopter will come in to save that life,” Fries said. “And then while the helicopter is there, picking up that injured civilian, the Taliban will try to shoot it down.”

That’s what makes the work of the Dustoffers so dangerous. They are normally accompanied by a helicopter gunship and the medics carry personal weapons for protection in case they get separated from the chopper. But the Dustoff Medevac aircraft are completely unarmed, protected only by the large Red Cross on the surface of the helicopter.

Of course, just like the crew members, Fries experienced the stress of the rescue missions. He also had to soak up the same sights, smells and sounds.

There were Marines hoisted aboard the choppers with horrifying wounds.

“I've had patients where all four extremities were blown off,” Army medic Alfonso Albright told Fries.

Others lost both legs or an arm and a leg. And the medics not only have to tend to the wounds and try to save the man’s life, they also have to answer his questions, console his anxiety and calm his fear.

'Just too gruesome'

But the cases of the children were the worst.

“I had a camera mounted on the medic's chest,” he said, “so you could see him as he's going out and picking up patients. And on a couple of these, you know, where these children had been burned, it was just footage you couldn't show or use anywhere. It's just too gruesome.

“I worried about having a little PTSD, myself, you know, from having to take photographs and video of people in their worst possible moment of their life. They've just lost their leg or their arm or something like that.

“So emotionally, I worried about what kind of toll it would take on me, but oddly enough, having a camera as that distance between myself and the injured person; it seemed to be a buffer. And it didn't affect me the way I thought it would.”

Of course, after a month, Fries got to come home. Back in Afghanistan, it is not unheard of for Dustoff crew members to reject the two-week rest and recuperation vacations to which they are entitled. They know how badly they are needed.

“You can't stop,” medic Jaime Adame told Fries, “and you don't want to be driven crazy, wondering, 'What if; what if I blow up; what if there's another mine; what if they haven't found something?' So you just do it; you just roll with it

“There is nothing more noble than when you go out,” said 2nd Lt. Phillip Schantin, his voice breaking hard, “excuse me, when you go out; you get a guy; bring him back. And then you hear how he made it home and how he got reunited with his family. There is no other mission that would give me this kind of emotional response.”

As for the Marines on the ground, commanding officer Col. David Furness summed up their feelings about the Army Dustoffers

“They're tremendous; we couldn't do what we do without them,” he told Fries. “And I just thank God they're on our side because they're a hell of a combat multiplier.”

All of this still lingers in the filmmaker’s heart as he sits at his editing console, putting together a one-hour documentary he expects will air on the Discovery Military Channel.