A mess of stinging downwash.
An arm beacons me into action.
Following blood on the sand.
Rotors pound out the backbeat.
I’m carrying a fellow soldier.
Notes: Dust-off is the American call sign given to helicopters who scoop up battlefield causalities, they are tasked on the spur of the moment, responding to urgency on the ground (as opposed to Casevac/Medivac/MERT flights, which are dedicated red crossed-marked helicopters with flight medics on board). Blackhawks were the ubiquitous utility helicopter used by American forces.
I don’t know why the Dust-off landed at Sather Air Force Base, Baghdad. It wasn’t where the primary medical emergency centre was located, and I never saw it happen again. The entire incident was over in a few minutes.
RJ MacDonald lives in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland. He left Scotland as a teenager and spent sixteen years in America enlisting in the U.S. Marines Reserves after graduating from UC Berkeley. He returned to Scotland to complete two masters degrees and was commissioned into the Royal Air Force Reserves. A veteran of Iraq and Libya, he now serves on a volunteer RNLI lifeboat, tasked with a 24/7 all-weather maritime search and rescue role in some of the world's roughest seas.