Vietnam-Era Heroism | Combat SAR Stories That Defined a Generation

In country, we were being attached to the MACD SOG special operations. Well, when they, you go in for your brief and get done with the brief and you come out and you have to leave your dog tags. You're a Geneva Convention card, military ID card and ID patch and anything else that says US on it behind. They hand you a Russian made side arm and a Russian made rifle and then you go on a mission transporting people that are not our uniform, shall we say. You start to question a little bit about where you might be going. Welcome to the calm and the chaos podcast where we discuss untold heroic experiences and dive into the mindset of the Navy's elite rescue swimmers hosted by former US Navy aviation rescue swimmer Mount Everest solo summit here and best selling author Brian Dickinson. Hey everyone, it's Brian Dickinson. If you're enjoying these stories, please take a second to like, subscribe and share the podcast. It helps more people find these conversations and it keeps the mission alive. And if you want early access to new episodes and to support what we're building, consider becoming a Spotify paid subscriber. Your support means everything. Now let's jump in so others may live. Bill look and bill almost 24 years of service. We got connected through a mutual friend who's working over at NSW Sears School. Just so honored to have you on and just to have a conversation with you. Welcome. Well, thank you for inviting me. It's always nice to meet others of the same family. So we say, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what's cool about the podcast is just having conversations from all ends of it, you know, in different duties, everything because the aviation rescue swimmer community does so many different things. We need to kind of just get a, you know, just these conversations and, you know, street from the source. I know you had some incredible experiences. So for everyone who doesn't know you, once you tell us a little bit about yourself, like where did you grow up? I grew up in Montana and Wyoming both was born in Wyoming and then my dad was working oil production. And we had a ranch and outside a little town called Big Timber of Montana and we leased that out for a while. And then when I come close to going to high school, I started in and stayed there then finished growing up. Yeah, started college like most everybody, I guess, but realized that wasn't for me. I knew if I didn't go ahead and sign up, I was going to get drafted. So I went ahead decided I would go ahead and join the Navy and mainly because they had guaranteed me aviation. And I'd, from what I'd been able to research, the Navy had the best schools for aviation. So most all encompassing any case. Yeah, what year was that that was 1967 didn't get going till May of '68. It's actually what I went to boot camp. Okay. Where did you go to boot camp? Aaron San Diego. Nice. And you're still there. As a matter of fact, did you ever make it back to Montana or just for vacations? I just go back up for vacations. Initially, I was going to had a job when I was getting ready to retire as a flight medic for basically a light flight outfit. And plus I had gotten my A and P license and inspection authorization through the FAA working at the flying club at North Island. And I was going to be able to double dip from them by being a flight medic one day and then do their inspection and maintenance. And then that went away when the Navy decided that I had to stay in play for desert shield and desert storm. Navy always gets in the way. As it turned out, it worked out for the best usually does not funny how that works like in the moment like you have plans and you realize, okay, these were my plans and there's there's a larger plan at play here. That's neat. So, okay. So you went in in 68 San Diego from there. Did you go straight to like air cruise school? Like what did that all look like back then? I went to a school started out as an ADR and then they took the top three from ADR and offered us ADJ a school. And I, because I was the top of the class, I went ahead and went for it because they said ADR was going to be going away. And it did. But went to ADJ and then basic helicopter school. And in the process they wanted to know who wanted to fly. They sent me out here to ring field here in Imperial Beach as a rescue swimmer and in the kind of as an afterthought they threw paramedic training into it. Nice. It's probably a good idea to have all of that, you know, if you're going to rescue them, keep them alive. What was the, what was the air crew and rescue swimmer school like back in 68? Mostly a lot of running and swimming and the paramedic training, we got it in four weeks instead of the, like if a corpsman goes to EMT school, it's 13 weeks. So we, we got it in four weeks and then immediately deployed from there, a back to our squadron and back to, or and then on to Vietnam. Yeah, well. So this was when rescue swimmer school was in its infancy. Exactly. So tell us about that. They were designing the RES link. I don't know if they still have it, but it was the harness that the rescue swimmers wore for pickup. And it, Robert E. Smith was our chief that was instructor that was designing this thing. And so there were a number of learning episodes with it. We got the face mask broken. I got my nose broken by it. And some various other little incidents is until it came up to be what we ended up using the rest of my career. Yeah, well, thanks, thanks for figuring that out for the rest of us. Yeah, so you're helping, I mean, they're, they designed the initial RES link was, did you break your nose from? Was it one of the attachments? Well, it had the hook on it. So we could hook up to the rescue hook on the noise. But the problem with it was that initially it was all just folded over and laid down with Velcro. Yeah. And that worked the first time. And the second time you hit the water from about 10, 15 feet, all of the Velcro came undone and the hook and the belt and everything came up and slapped you in the face. Yeah. So then they modified that they put a different kind of Velcro on and it worked a little bit better, but then it started doing the same thing. And then they put a cover jacket more or less over the top of it to hold it down. And that was more or less the final fix for that portion of it. Okay. And then so I can tell you I went through in 93 and the problem still existed a lot of times, because we had the harness and then we had a sar one floatation. Right. And after you're doing multiple jumps, you would hook, you know, the hook, the D ring hook or whatever that clips in. And then we would, you know, hold your mask on, but this other arm went across to prevent that from coming up and hitting. So it's like, you know, this cross, cross chest thing, but it was all, you know, based on lessons learned the hard way, you know, back in when you went through. Well, it's the same thing with the, when we were doing our initial jumping and learning to jump out of the helix. The quote, 10, 10, it was first half yet ready, next half go, and not three. The other problem that that showed, I went out on one of our practice jumps at about 90 feet, about 90 knots over Otai Lake out here. The good part about it was the fact that I was too young and dumb at it. So I held my position all the way till I hit. I didn't how already have it built in and how long it's going to take me. So I didn't look for the water and ended up, it didn't end up hurting myself. My duck feet flippers came up around my thighs because of the water I went right through them. And I lost my mask, never did find that. But it was very interesting for a while. But I did a whole lot better than a bunch of guys. Apparently people ended up dead from it. So they changed from one tap to get ready, second tap to go was to one tap, go ahead and get ready. But then two distinct taps and then go. Now it's one to release the gunners belt three on the right shoulder. So yeah, just evolves over time. Yeah, most of it is good and blood. Yeah, I know, it's unfortunate. Yeah, Whitney Warren who connected us, she had a jump from pretty high up as well and broke her back and wasn't expected to even survive. And she made it back through, had a miracle and came, continued being a swimmer and everything else. But yeah, it's a game of inches, you know, you're in the wrong way. I mean, it can be game over. So yeah, I kind of have to go back to what my dad says, the good Lord takes care of idiots and fools and the babies and it's going to keep you around if you've got something you're supposed to do. Yeah, that's great, great advice. Man, your dad was a visionary. So okay, so was there a high attrition rate going through a rescue swimmer school back then or was it kind of made it through the initial qualification to get in it or to start this swimmer school because we were so accelerated to get us to Vietnam. They, it was a pretty good test to start with. And we still had probably maybe 25% because they'd already weeded out over 50% before we ever started. That's how it should be, right? Like why waste the resources if they can't even get through the build up or the in test or anything else. So then you have the candidates going through. Yeah, the initial test was pretty strenuous and then from there it was, I didn't think it was that bad, but whatever. Well, at the time, did you not think it was that bad or is it years later, you look back and looking back. Oh, yeah. I love short-term memory. That's why I keep climbing mountains, I guess. People do marathons. It's like, it's a suffer fest. It's like, why am I doing this? You finish one and then, you know, a couple of weeks later, you sign up for another. And it's, it's kind of a, I think a portion of us, a large portion of it for me at least, I was always kind of an adrenaline junkie. So that contributed to it. Yeah, I think significantly. Sure. Yeah, it's a good way to channel that, especially when you're young. Well, that's, that's awesome. So from there, you were an 80 J. I was an 80 J. Yeah. And you went to, you deployed like right away, right away, December 68. Okay. What, like, what aircraft were you flying in? Initially, we flew in all, all kinds of different aircraft, but I ended up going to HC-3 and they were tasked to teach debt camera on bay and debt tons of nut how to fly the H-46. Prior to that, they were flying the H-34s. But while we were going through training, we flew in H-3s with H-2s. We got the fly in the first H-2 Charlie and the fleet, according to the paint on the nose. That was interesting. But I was, I kind of liked the 46, but when we finally got to Vietnam, we didn't have our helicopters hadn't got there yet. So I ended up catching flights with whoever I could, just so I'd get my flight pay and, quote, stay current. Yeah. So I ended up flying with H-3s for a while out of Deb Ben-2ee. How was that? I'm interesting. One of the guys from my hometown was one of the pilots, and that's how I got kind of volent-tolled into it. Yeah. He says, he needed what they needed gunners and to quote him, he says, "I know you can shoot." So it worked out. It got me some flight time until our helos actually got there. And then at that point, were you short-based, or were you attached to a ship? We were short-based. Okay. So how many deployments to Vietnam did you end up doing? Ended up doing four, total. Two off the coast flying, resupply, bed-of-back, and all of that. From the ship, basically anything that had a flight deck. And then we had the two-in-tuntry tours. Yeah. What was better in country or being out on a ship? In country, I got to see some beautiful scenery. Interspiked periodically with a shot of a adrenaline, but other than that, it was very interesting. In country, we were being attached to the MACV-SOG special operations. Well, when they, you go in for your brief and get done with the brief and you come out and you have to leave your dog tags, your Geneva Convention card, military ID card, and ID patch and anything else that says US on it behind. They hand you a Russian made sidearm and a Russian made rifle. And then you go on a mission transporting people that are not our uniform, shall we say. You start to question a little bit about where you might be going, but I just read that the SOG book is just incredible. Just the mission sets that they're speaking about now. And yeah, for you to be a part of that is just. Well, the thing about it, the SOG people, quote, "loved our baby shit hook" as they referred to it. The Chinook being the 47 was quite a bit bigger, a big target. But the 46 was not quite as fast, but we could carry basically what two UIs plus could carry as far as trophies. And that way we didn't have quite as big a target signature going on some of these episodes. Did you usually have. What would it look like from a gunship escort perspective? Whether it be a couple 46s, infill, ex-fill, and you'd have each one gunships. Now, what we usually had, the Army referred to it as a pink team. And I'm still not certain how they come up with that. Other than they would have a couple loaches or a loach head out again, a small signature. And his job was to go out and poke around and get somebody stupid enough to shoot at him. Then he'd market with smokes and rockets. And as soon as that happened, he'd get the hell out of the way, go a click or two from that site, while the gunships, initially it was the Huey, and then later on the snakes would come in, you know, when they started showing up, but they'd go in and run the neighborhood. Meanwhile, the loach would poke around, a click or two away, and if there was, he didn't get anybody shooting at him over there, then we'd come in and dump the troopies off, and then get the hell out, go area, and just kind of orbit, in case they ended up in a hornet snestlet we had to go in and snatch them out again. And then were you, what type of infills was it mainly trying to land to get everyone out, or were you falceroping? Yes, some of it was a low hover because you didn't know what kind of, what you had there and with wheels on a 46, they're not too forgiving, like skids on a Huey are. Because you can kind of set it down, but with the 46 haven't wheels, you'd just kind of get down real low, and everybody'd either run off the ramp or something of that nature, and you didn't linger, it was, you got in, you hesitated, everybody ran off and you got a lot of dodge, sometimes extractions were a little more laborious, you had to hang around a little bit more. Yeah, it's well, yeah, in the book, there's a song book, they're talking about force penetrators and different devices, even like a seat type of sling, just trying to extract people out because it's such a hot environment, you're taking fire, and yeah, you see. We used a lot of the McGuire rig that, I mean, we just rolled in, they already had it hooked up to the cargo hook, and just throw that out, the troopers would, you know, we go down low, they hook up, and then as they hooked up, we'd pick them up off the ground and get in the process and getting the hell out of dodge. Would you sort haul to a place so they could get in, or are they climbing? Oh yeah, we'd short haul, but when we were going through training with it, they would usually troll for sharks out here off the coast with us, learning how to fly yourself, because by moving your legs and your arms, you can turn a reposition to where you can actually even shoot from being on that McGuire rig. That's some crazy stuff. So do you have a mission set that you went out on that kind of bubbles through the surface like as far as a memory that's more something you want to share? That's that I've got some issues with it, you know, put that straight up, but all most of the stuff that I can remember easily that really pops back to mind are the funny things. That's one we went in for a reef supply medevac, and hot LZ go in, kind of plop down, and a dozen guys run at the back of the helicopter with bundles between them and just slide them up inside the helicopter, and the last guy by had a unit one, and he'd give you a thumbs up and we'd get the hell out of dodge. And once we were in the air, then we had to sort out what we had, you know, who had what wounds, had what meds on board, et cetera, and all because all it was, they just wrapped them in a poncho, and probably their own poncho and just slid them in. Then we've opened it up and then we'd check if they had an IV, I'd go ahead and hang that up, and then basically get them to advance care, you know, a field hospital someplace. One of those kid, and I'm calling him a kid, I mean, I was 20 years old, 19 or 20, and he was a kid to me, and he had already been hit with morphine. So he was zooming pretty good, and got him sorted out, got his IV hanging up, and back then it was bottles, it wasn't the bags that we've gotten now and later on. And got all of that going, and then went to check on the next one, and my thing was going good, I needed to get an additional dressing for him, so I went back forward, the kid grabbed my pant leg, and goes, "Hey buddy, check my nuts, make sure they're okay." He'd taken a hit in the thigh, and so I've made a point of moving the dressing and, you know, looking at everything's good, no problem, nuts are still there. Everything's still there, and he did that about two more times, finally I pulled my survival vest mirror out, the signal mirror we got carried in the vest, and I just untied it and handed it to him. The entire rest of the way, and as they were carrying him off on the stretcher, at the hospital we dropped him off at, he had the dressing pulled out of the way, and he's just grinning like a possum, using that mirror to make sure everything is still there. That's classic, that's the stuff you can go here and accept on the Chaos Podcast. Most of this stuff, as far as the rescues and medevacs, the field medics had already done most of the patching and everything was, you know, pretty stable by the time we got involved. I'm sure otherwise they probably wouldn't have made it. That's amazing just to be in that position, to serve those that are on the ground, taking those heads and getting them to safety, and it's crazy as it is, but when you're in shock and you're wondering if your nut sack is missing, it's a little mirror, that kept him busy. You got to have a priority, for sure. So after four deployments, you came back, there was a lull until the first skull four correct? Yeah, well, when I came back from Vietnam, my next duty station was fell on Nevada, search and rescue, and there we did a whole lot of waving the Navy flag, if you will, about, well we did, there was no such thing as life flight then, and basically that's what we did. My unfortunate first rescue was called in by a tourist driving into Hawthorne, Nevada, and got ahold of the sheriff's there, and said he'd seen a jet go in over his head, and then he saw a fireball in the air. So we went, that particular squadron was scheduled for what they call a sandblower drop on one of the bombing ranges at the Fallon Air Base target areas, and they had always been right on time. It was the meriniate outfit out of El Toro, and so because of the fact that that aircraft was about 30 minutes late at being on target, and that squadron has always been right on time. We went ahead and launched, and got down there, we did find it. We tried to take the top off of them out with an A4, and it obviously was not successful. It took us about three days to find somewhere around 80 pounds of a 200-pound man. I found the first part, I found his head still in the helmet. That's one of them that, it comes back to me every once in a while. I'm sure you can't unsee that, sorry you had to do that, but again it's such a blessing to be able to bring, recover part of his body for his family and everything else. Exactly. It goes with the job. I would want that for my family. Yeah. That's all right. one of them. I'm. that kind of counterbalanced that we would have to go down to the Hawthorne Navy Naval weapons station and fly their perimeter because they'd had people break in and so forth. And we were on our way down for that and we saw the highway cop just running full lights and sirens down the highway 95. And so we came up on the HF, dialed in channel nine, freak on it and come up asking if he needed help. And he said, yep, he was going to an accident. It had been a car versus semi accident. And as it turned out, this I suspect this woman wasn't paying attention or something, but in any case, side swipe to tanker truck and ended up avalcing her left arm. That was on the front bumper of the semi. We started working on her. One of the things that I learned out of that was we had her about ready for transport and some guy walked up and goes, oh my God, her arm is torn off. And we had her on a life pack four, which we could, you know, gave us heart monitor. We could follow. And she started to go into a V-tack. That's not good at all. We had her on ringers right away. The nice thing about evulsion was the body's normal response is for the blood vessels to squeeze and they don't bleed as badly as a slice would. And so in any case, we got attorney good honor arm. Got arm off the front bumper, laid it in alongside her on the litter, and put a couple of dressings over it. We were dribbling and keeping that wound area wet with normal sailing. And finally, like I say, she was unconscious, but we just kept up and all your arm is right here and a touch her shoulder. Pretty soon you could see the heart rate, her heart rate going back to a normal sinus. And soon as she got normal sinus, we loaded her in the helo fluid to watch on medical center. They're in Reno. They took her in about six months later. Each, she came into our hanger to thank us. And I figured at the time that, yeah, if they were able to attach her arm, she'd just basically have a dish rag that she could look like she was intact and could move it around, but she came in holding a soda with that arm and drinking it. That was a big pat on the back as far as I was considering. Well, that's amazing. It's a miracle. Well, I talked to the surgeon. And because I had emptied two med kits of all the hemostats, everything that was hanging out of the wound, we put a clamp on. And got it all clamped. According to the surgeon, we clamped a hell of a lot of things that didn't need to be clamped. It's okay. You know, everything was that he needed was clamped, readily accessible. And he says he was able to just immediately just start hooking everything back up where it went. No problems. And well, he said he had a prognosis of 95% recovery. So that that made beefy old mighty good. That's so cool. I wonder where she is today. I often wonder that myself, but maybe she'll hear this. She'll reach out. Maybe. That's amazing. Man, just think about just the life you changed with that one incident. Yeah. That's so cool. Well, so then you're in Fallon. And where'd you go from there? Fallon, they sent me back to San Diego back to flying. And it ended up going back to HC-3. And then we started HC-11. And I was one of the first six selected for standing up HC-11. And then when they did HC-5, a couple of years later, they're in a gun of bomb. I was selected to help them get that going. But one of my kids had a learning disability and that I had to bow out of it and they let me with that without any problems. That's good. Yeah. So was that that was all 46s? That was all 46s. I ended up, I think, 3,800 hours and 46s, 1,800 hours, I think, in around that in Huey's. And about 500 hours, little more in HC-3s. How's your back? Not giving me problems. That's a lot of a late time. Part of the problem with that is at Fallon, we had changed from mic models to end models. And that was a nice improvement for having two engines flying in the mountains. Hey, everyone. This podcast doesn't pay for itself, which is why I launched KickAss. Keep calm in the chaos and merge line. It's not just about a slogan. It's a mindset, a mission, a way of life. Plus, it's an attention getter as random people see and ask about your dope beer. It provides an opportunity to share your unique story with others to help spread some calm across humanity. Every shirt, hat, or sticker you buy goes straight into keeping this podcast alive. The incredible guests and stories and the impact of their experiences. Tap the link or visit shop.com and the chaospodcast.com to gear up today. Thank you so much for helping support the mission so others may live. We were on a search for a missing prospector. I was out on a gunner's belt on the left side of the Hilo. And flying along, we had a problem with it. About a month prior, we changed the 42-degree gearbox for time. We got a C-CAD or Corpus Christi Army depot overhaul. Put that on. We had been out on another search. And as we were headed back to our base at Fallon, we got us a chip plate and it up making a run-on landing at one of the well, Gina Saltwell's Villa was the name of the place. And they had a runway of sorts out there. We slid on our Huey there and the girls came out and gave us lemonade and we went in and used their phone to call back the base to say what had happened. Everything worked out fine. Well, then after I've fleshing it, getting the fuzz and stuff off the chip detector, then about a month and a half later, we were on the search for a prospector. And as we're going along and I'm looking at some tracks in the snow, all of a sudden there's a loud bang and a rapid right-hand rotation. And somehow I got in a seat and got this lap belt on. I didn't get the slack out, but before we hit, I don't remember doing it to be totally honest that, like I say, one minute I'm on the gunners belt. And the next minute we'd already hit the ground, but I got slapped around pretty good and it screwed out my lumbar, mid thoracic and cervical spine. And the Navy approved American Medical Association was put to use. I ultimately ended up going to chiropractor and that fixed it. But what had happened was the 42-degree gearbox had basically exploded left the airframe for us. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kidding. Man, just think about it. You know, every flight you practice for crashing, it was so embedded in your head that, you know, your memory [BLANK_AUDIO] that you felt that heard whatever's happening, you're doing it, you know, before you could even think and it saved your life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That you don't, like I say, you don't even know you're doing it. You've already done it. Yeah. All that training is just ingrained so thoroughly into you into you. Yeah. You just respond. You don't have to think. Yeah. Yeah. Thank goodness. Seems annoying at the time, but then when you need it. Okay. That's why. Well, so then you went to Desert Storm. Right, David. I got, I lucked out of that. I, what they did to me, they were sending me over. And a friend of mine had got out about six months earlier, had a job waiting for him with Convair. And they called him back. He thought it was Convair calling him to come to work because you had to be the rule was then. I don't know if it is now, but when you retire, you have to be out of it for at least six months before you can go to a job that is with a DOD contract. That way there's no semblance of you might be inappropriate. So anyhow, he gets a call. They send him over. He got the only rescue. That a 10 pilot that got shot down during it. He got that rescue got back. They dropped the pilot off. For his debrief, the pilots went for their debrief. And after the crew got the Halo ready for its next go or next call out, the carry all picked them up and on the way over for their debrief, it ended up having a blowout flipped up on its side and it up crushing his whole right side. He spent the next three years attached to the Naval Hospital here in Balboa, getting put back together. And mine, I had taken a twilight tour with AIMD as the LPO and that for the engine shop. And I ended up having to go draw my flight gear, my desert cammy issue and all of that. But then the admiral that I had to report to for his engine radio availability and so forth says informed him I wasn't going any place. So I stayed here at North Island on 24 hour alert for the whole thing. But I never had to go to the sandbox. I just made sure they had plenty of engines. Yeah, yeah, important. So then you got out and continued your legacy of service by working with the border patrol, right? Yeah, well, my job that I had planned on had gone away. And I run into one of my pilots from Vietnam that was one of the pilots with the border patrol and informed me that they were looking for mechanic observers, you know, to go there. And as it turned out, worked out great. Good able or I was still able to fix them and fly them. So I enjoyed that. Then when they say that was a lot of fun. They were flying the OH-6s or referred to in Vietnam as the loach. McDonald Douglas previously Howard Hughes designed helicopter. And it was I'm convinced was probably the most survivable helicopter. That they've made. Yeah. As long as you keep it, shall we say shiny side up before you hit it. It's I love the OH-6. And as far as flying it, it was a sports car. It's extremely maneuverable and dependable. Plus if it did break down, you could work on it anywhere with a minimal amount of tools. So that's neat. So you were flying with border patrol? I flew with them. They wouldn't let us do the nighttime stuff, but they'd let us do the daytime. So what was a normal operation, Flynn? We just go out and look. And basically, as for instance, we'd be on a patrol. And they'd ask for our call sign was Foxtrot. They'd call Foxtrot. And so forth. So and so it needs assistance at one of the place, one of agents. And so we'd go and the really strange thing about it. I thought initially my first question was how the hell do you know? Who's legal and who's illegal from the air? And so on one of my the first flights that I was on, we went out. And we flew down the fence to the ocean. And their imperial beach and started cruising up. The beach is full. And you see one group of people going along. And they won't look at you. They're looking down. They won't acknowledge that you're there at all. And then the next group of people. They're either waving at you or they might be giving you the finger who knows. But they acknowledge that you're there. So it was rather obvious that the ones that we're trying to disappear. That we're not acknowledging you were the ones that weren't supposed to be there. Yeah. That reminds me of like teaching chong up and smoke. The healers were going overhead and he put down like a blue tarp and acted like it was a pool swimming in his back. It's covering the weed. That looks legit. Oh yeah. That's funny. Well, that's that's pretty awesome. You go from just one ultimate form of serving to another. You know, I just had a lifestyle of just making a difference in others. So that's such an honor to hear these stories. Do you want to go back to your rescue swimmer days? And I'll give you a hypothetical scenario. And we'll just kind of see where your mindset goes. Okay. All right. All right. Let's do. It's a mountainous terrain rescue in freezing conditions. Here's a scenario. A group of hikers is stranded at 12,000 feet in a remote. Snow-covered mountain range, one person has severe frostbite in hypoxia. You're launched to go extract them. What's going through your head as a as a rescue swimmer air crew? Well, my first if they're at 12,000 feet, they're going to be short on 02. So I'm going to try to get at least one extra 02 bottle. But in addition to this, our standard pack. The other thing I'm going to we're going to have to look at is the winds. And because if they are on the lee side. There may not were may end up having to go real high and hoist down to them. To stay away from that downflow of the winds. You're going to have like I say, you can you really need to look which way the winds are blowing. And how the winds are blowing. With snow, sometimes it will tell you what's what the winds are doing. And just because the weather guessers tell you it's out of the west. Doesn't necessarily mean that that's that's what you got. The other thing is you're probably going to have to stay high as you approach it. To see what you're getting into. You may have to drop off above and work down to them. That's we've had to do that several times on a high Sierra rescues. You find an open clearing up above. Basically do a no hover landing in the clearing. and set it down there, and then hiked down to the survivors. That was one of the things I found when they sent me to Fallon Nevada. That was with the Sarteen there. That was right at the beginning of the Back to Nature craze. And there were people out in the high seers, wilderness areas, with less than I take in my own backyard. And I ended up with a rescue up there about Fallon leaf lake outside of South Lake Tahoe. They were at about 9,000 feet. And it was a man, his fiance, and his sister had gone hiking. And that area is a whole lot of shale rock and shale rock slides. It's very sharp. The sister was wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and deck shoes. It was what I call them. Not even a tennis shoe, more like a deck shoe. And so was the fiance, and so was the brother. When the sister slid down the mountain, it laid open her thigh to the bone. And his fiance went and had his t-shirt and was holding her thigh together with the use of that t-shirt. As the brother tried running down the mountain, luckily he ran into a ranger within about a mile. The ranger, in turn, called for assistance from us. And we were working about maybe five miles away, doing practice repelling down through trees, just for currency when we got the call. And we had just gotten back aboard the aircraft. So we went direct to it. We ended up having to land uphill, again, like I just described, no hover, basically, not really a slide on, but touched down and hiked down to them. She had lost enough blood that I had to wait. We opened up two leaders of ringers. And after I finally got an IV going on her, we had them wide open to try to get some volume back. On it and picked her up, pumped her up to the helo and flew her off the wash on medical center. And she survived quite well out of it with a real ugly scar. Lucky you were right there. You just had to, you landed above to get out, go down, did you end up having to carry her up? Or did you put her in a litter or anything? Yeah, we carried what was called the green litter. And the neat thing about the green litter is that you build it up. You didn't have to move the patient. You build it up around them kind of like a scoop. And get it in. You can adjust it for height. If they have broken extremity, you could adjust that lengthwise. And you could actually take traction on a broken leg to really. And even if they're unconscious, you can watch their face. And you can see the face relax as the pain diminishes through having the traction. But like I said, we build that up right around them and then. Carried her up the hill and put her in the helo on a way we went. And everything worked out, but saved another. It was I was I found out. When I retire because I never paid attention, but during my retirement ceremony. My commander informed us all that I had 84 live rescues. And so that. That's a mind every thought of it. No, yeah, and you don't right because you're not doing it for that. No, others may live. And you think about 84 lives. That is. You know, there's so many more than that. But when you think about every single one of them, then went on to potentially have families. And yeah, you know, just spreads from there just amazing that, you know, that butterfly or trickle effect or whatever that you've had in your service. It's just amazing. And it makes me feel. I think about some of those. And to this day. And when I start feeling kind of depressed or whatever that. That kind of brings me back up. That's now 44 of them were all in one bunch. We ended up our air debt rescued 87 people off of a. A fishing boat. It was a factory fishing boat that ran a ground off the Mandora. And I ended up putting my swimmer in the water on the coral reef. Map our way in because there was it was uncharted. We flew in front of the ship. We were on it the time it was the Mount Hood. We flew ahead of it to see what was open and what wasn't. So they could get us in fairly close. And then we just started picking people up and hauling them up. We pick up 20 at a time for Halo and move them from there to the ship. No lies lost out of that fishing factory ship. That was amazing. Yeah, of course. Well, what an amazing story. Well, Bill, you've had incredible experiences. You know, not many. Most people can never really really understand, you know, what you've been through. What's a bit of wisdom that you would want to leave our listeners with? When the world turns to shit, take a deep breath. Relax. Engage the brain. And then then do what you got to do. If you start panicking and quote, getting upset. You can't do your job. You can't probably even save yourself. Yeah, incredible. Probably the best wisdom we'll ever have on the podcast. Thank you so much for that. Thanks for being here. And it's just it's been such a pleasure. And I know the listeners are going to get so much from. From your wisdom, your experiences. I think we could probably just have you on for hours and hours because there's so many more stories. So, probably have to have you back on. Thank you. I'd be glad to do it. If you get a chance down here in San Diego, show up with nothing else. Or a cup of coffee on your totty, you know. That'd be awesome. And for everyone else, thank you. And we will see you next time. Thank you for listening to The Calm in the Chaos Podcast. Please subscribe to be notified of future episodes. And if you enjoyed what you just heard, please leave a five star review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. Until next time, get out there and make a difference. So others may live.