Army Medivacs rescue anyone, even the enemy
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - To be embedded with a military unit means that you live, eat, sleep and work next to our troops around the world.
I'm currently living on-base at the Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan. We have it pretty good tonight - I'm with CBS News producer John Bentley in a room with air conditioning and bunk beds.
We've been embedded for more than a week now in Kandahar but just met up with the soldiers from the U.S. Army's Task Force Thunder today. We spent the day hoping in and out of their Black Hawk helicopters as we got to see some of their work as the main medivac unit for this area.
Because of Geneva Convention rules, a medical asset cannot be armed. So, the unarmed medivac helicopter flies in to evacuate the patient and a chase helicopter flies behind to support the medivac with light weapons.
These soldiers can be called on for anything that happens on the battlefield and they'll evacuate anyone from wounded troops on the battlefield, to civilians who might have had a terrible accident to an enemy combatant. That's right, if an insurgent needed medical attention, this team would swoop down from the sky to help. Flight medic Stephon Flynn told me earlier today that after all, "a life is a life."
We've filed a piece for tonight's CBS Evening News but we'll be up bright and early tomorrow and will stay embedded for the next couple of days shooting for future stories. After the terrible incident involving the Chinook in eastern Afghanistan, we wanted to look at how difficult it is to fly a helicopter in this country. Later this week, we'll focus more on the humanitarian work that Task Force Thunder undertakes in a war zone.
