Attacks highlight growing danger for copter medics
ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- In November, less than two months after joining the Witch Doctors, a team of helicopter-borne Army medics, Sergeant Michael A. Diraimondo crawled into burning wreckage to rescue fellow soldiers from a Chinook chopper shot down by Iraqi insurgents.
Diraimondo, 22, was killed Thursday, along with three team members and five of their patients, when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed as it approached a field hospital near Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad that has been a center of attacks on US forces. The military said yesterday a preliminary investigation indicated that the copter had been shot down by guerrillas.
At their headquarters at Asad Air Base atop a desert plateau in western Iraq, members of Diraimondo's unit, formally known as the 571st Medical Company, are contemplating what they see as the growing danger of their job -- swooping down in unarmed Black Hawks to rescue wounded soldiers and civilians, often during ongoing battles.
"What binds this unit is our mission," said the unit's commander, Major Bill LaChance, originally from Coventry, R.I. "I can think of no greater calling, no more noble cause than responding to soldiers who need it."
The Witch Doctors, composed of about 150 soldiers, have whisked 1,800 casualties to safety since deploying to Iraq from Fort Carson, Colo., in April.
Medical evacuation teams fly in helicopters marked with crosses, without the two machine-gunners who peer from the windows of most Black Hawks. Their Vietnam-era motto, "DUST OFF" -- "Dedicated, unhesitating support to our fighting forces" -- gives soldiers the confidence to go into battle, said LaChance, 38.
"No matter what happens, an aircraft with a red and white cross on it is coming for them," he said.
Medics also treat wounded Iraqis without discrimination, LaChance said, in order of the seriousness of injuries.
He said he thinks insurgents are increasingly targeting helicopters and see the unarmed medical flights as easy targets, even though shooting at them is banned under the Geneva Conventions.
"Those who would do us harm realize the major casualty effect of an aircraft going down," he said.
"They realize the media effect."
Helicopter crashes have dealt some of the most devastating blows to coalition forces.
The 571st lost its first helicopter May 9, when two teams flew to Samarra to pick up an Iraqi child who had stepped on a land mine. After one of the helicopters came under fire, it swerved, struck a power line, and crashed, killing three of four crew members.
The Chinook crash on Nov. 2 -- 3 miles from the site of Thursday's crash -- killed 16 soldiers, many from this base, who were on their way home on leave.
There was no distress call from the Black Hawk, LaChance said. After visiting the crash site, he said the helicopter had been ripped apart. Witnesses told reporters they saw the tail explode.
The night after the crash, LaChance found himself pondering heroism. A stern man with close-cropped red hair and love of World War II history, he was weary after a day of mourning. Back home in Fort Carson, his wife, Candace, had gone door to door with an Army chaplain, notifying the families of the dead.
LaChance said Diraimondo, of Simi Valley, Calif., had been nominated for an Air Medal of Valor for helping rescue soldiers from the Chinook.
"Crawling into a wreck with a postcrash fire and a pool of fuel around it. Where do you find people like that?" he said.
He also recalled how Chief Warrant Officer Ian D. Manuel, 23, also killed Thursday, wept after the memorial service for the three killed May 9 -- yet thanked LaChance for pushing him to keep flying. Manuel, of Florida, recently had won an Air Medal of Valor for landing in hostile circumstances to rescue a soldier.
"After you've seen the wreckage and the loss, still being able to strap yourself back in, that's something," LaChance said.
Other crew members killed were Chief Warrant Officer Philip A. Johnson Jr., 31, of Mobile, Ala., a pilot who was married to an Air Force lieutenant; and Specialist Christopher A. Golby, 26, of Johnstown, Pa., a medic and the father of three sons.
A memorial service is planned for today for the four killed, who flew from Forward Operating Base Ridgeway.
The 571st serves under the 82d Airborne Division, which controls a western swath of Iraq that makes up a third of the country's land mass. Its soldiers fly from five bases, headquartered at this former Iraqi base overlooking plateaus and canyon lands reminiscent of the American West.
This is the home base of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, whose helicopter pilots -- men and women -- stride about in beige coveralls and, sometimes, black Stetsons with silver trim.
Although the Asad camp has never been attacked, even out here pilots fly low and vary their routes to throw off would-be attackers.
The day of the Black Hawk crash, pilots ferrying US officials and contractors to the western town of Rutbah hugged the ground for safety, skimming low over flocks of sheep and Bedouin tents. But they completed climbing and diving maneuvers and playfully traced the course of a dry riverbed.
The helicopters are about as safe as they could be, LaChance said. They are quick and maneuverable and have infrared-light suppressors to throw off heat-seeking missiles. Hitting a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade takes luck, he said: "Big sky, little bullet."
But helicopters landing are easier targets because they move more slowly and predictably.
LaChance said that when he was stationed in Germany, he often took unruly young soldiers to a US military cemetery and left them for two hours. The point, he said, was for them to notice that most of the men in the graves were younger than they were.
But he said the members of his unit, who declined to speak with a reporter yesterday, were all the more motivated after the crash.
"Bravery isn't the absence of fear. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."
