Jul 15, 2009, post by awatrobski
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A MUM last night spoke proudly of her son’s bravery after he was wounded in action in Afghanistan.
Lance Sergeant Gethyn Wyn Rowlands was injured last Wednesday when he was shot in the right shoulder.
The 27-year-old Welsh Guardsman refused painkillers to ease the pain so he could walk to safety, and save his comrades the effort of carrying him away from the battle because they were still facing the enemy.
And he wants to get out of the hospital at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s troubled Helmand province and rejoin his mates on the frontline.
Speaking at her Newborough home, his mum Elizabeth told the Daily Post: “It’s typical of Gethyn that he would want to help his mates even though he was injured.
“It’s also typical that he wants to get back into action. The Army is his life.”
The 44-year-old said Gethyn, originally from Amlwch, had wanted to join the Army since he was a little boy.
“I remember him aged about five pretending to be a soldier in the back yard. He joined up when he was 16 and he’s since served in Bosnia and Northern Ireland. He left the Army a few years ago for a while but he couldn’t settle and rejoined. He said the Army’s more like family.”
Gethyn flew out to Afghanistan with his regiment in April for a six-month stint of duty – but didn’t tell his mum where he was going.
“I had an inkling he was there but he didn’t tell me,” she said.
“All he said was he loved me. Like the others, he only gets to ring home for 20 minutes a week and he calls his girlfriend Nerys and their little girl Megan. I’m expecting him home in September.”
His brother Gary and stepsister Carla have been anxiously waiting for news from Afghanistan.
Elizabeth said the first she knew of Gethyn’s injuries was a phone call from the Ministry of Defence.
“I didn’t take the call but I was told he’d been injured and that he could be flown back to Birmingham. But later we heard the injury wasn’t that serious. I’ve got him a card to wish him well,” she added.
Gethyn was injured during the bloodiest week for casualties since forces were sent to Afghanistan in late 2001 – 15 soldiers died and dozens more injured. Over the past week 25 casualties have been evacuated back home to Britain.
An MoD spokesman said Gethyn was injured when a bullet clipped his throat and entered his right shoulder after his unit was ambushed by the Taliban during Operation Panther’s Claw.
Within 40 minutes Gethyn was on the operating table and the bullet was removed. He is back on his feet although his right arm is bandaged and in a sling. If all goes well he plans to be back in action in 10 days’ time. He said from his hospital bed: “I want to be back with the lads to get on with it.”
Jul 08, 2009, post by awatrobski
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Since 2003, we provide satellite Internet in Iraq and Afghanistan globally enabling Iraqi and Afghan citizens, businesses and remotely deployed personnel to have broadband Internet access, enterprise connectivity, VoIP and videoconferencing services at affordable costs.
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Senior Airman Adrian Jarrin conducts a preflight inspection of a .50 caliber machine gun June 25 at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan. Airman Jarrin is an aerial gunner with the 129th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Shawn Weismiller).
Air National Guard combat search and rescue crews on HH-60G Pave Hawks fly throughout Afghanistan to deliver airlift and medical care to service members injured on the battlefield.
More often than not, this requires them to fly into and operate in extremely hostile and precarious situations and locations, so aerial soldiers are charged with protecting their combat search and rescue teammates and help bring everyone on the helicopter back safely.
“The HH-60s need to be able to land virtually on top of the (point of injury) to quickly recover the wounded,” said Tech. Sgt. Scott Matthews, an aerial gunner with the 129th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron of the California Air National Guard. “The helicopters are a huge target for the enemy and we need to have our heads on a swivel making sure the (pararescuemen) have the cover they need to recover injured people.”
The rescue crews are successful in recovering the wounded largely because of the speed in which they can get to a location and extract the wounded on the ground.
“Speed is everything, so you need to be very familiar with your job so that you don’t cause any delays,” said Staff Sgt. Tim Chase, an active duty aerial gunner attached to the 129th ERQS. “We constantly train for these missions. This allows us to work confidently and quickly when we are on a mission. All that training helps us keep our guys safe in a hostile environment.”
The irony of the aerial gunner’s role in a rescue flight is that it often means that they have to take a life in order to save another.
“The aspect of this job I love more than anything else is that we’re here saving lives,” Matthews said. “On the flip side, we need to make sure that when PJs step off the bird to get the wounded, they have the protection they need. This may require taking out the bad guys so the good guys succeed.”
For the crews, flexibility is important, as they never encounter the same situation twice.
“The challenges that come with being in the back are constantly changing and dynamic because the (combat search and rescue) platform changes according to whatever theater we operate in,” admitted Staff Sgt. Sean Pellaton, a 129th ERQS aerial gunner and native of Castro Valley, Calif.
An ordinary observation among the crews of the rescue flights is the amount of chaos they fly into when recovering the wounded.
“When we’re on a mission, we’re seeing all this chaos and right in the middle of that, there’s this odd organization that exists,” said Matthews, deployed from the 129th RQS at Moffett Federal Airfield, Calif. “We’re right in the middle of these crazy situations. While we’re observing what’s going on all around us as thoroughly as possible for threats — whether natural or enemy — we’re also playing an active part using the radios and manning a weapon.”
The team, through training and experience, are completely in synch with one another, allowing the mission to become a well-orchestrated symphony of events. Once the helicopter lands, the gunners relay the signal for the pararescuemen and combat rescue officers to disembark from the helicopter to recover the wounded, while simultaneously alerting the operations center that the aircraft is wheel’s down.
The flight engineers and aerial gunners man their .50 cal machine guns providing a virtual 180 degrees of security on each side, monitor the blaring radios, update the crew on the activity out their doors and prepare the ground forces for the helicopters’ departure.
“It’s all going down in a matter of seconds,” Chase said. “In that time, I’m looking for bad guys, the PJs are triaging their patients, I’m giving a 30 second call for liftoff, the (flight engineer) is making sure the systems are working and the pilots are focusing on getting us out of there and back to base camp. I don’t know how or why, but everything just comes together.”
Indeed, it’s not until afterward that the crew has a moment to reflect on all the possibilities that could have happened during the mission. And it’s a process built into the mission itself. Each flight results in a thorough debriefing, where the entire scenario is re-stepped and evaluated. With so much happening all at once, there can be a lot missed from one seat in the helicopter to the next.
“Everything happens so rapidly that it’s only after the mission is complete that you realize how well everything went despite the chaos,” Matthews said. “That’s when you realize how easily things could have gone wrong if you weren’t focused enough, had enough training, or confidence in your crew’s teamwork.”
At the end of the day, it’s the goal of the rescue mission that leaves the biggest impression on the crew.
“Being a gunner, I’m part of something much bigger than myself,” Matthews said. “We go in and get guys who, if we weren’t there, may not make it to the next day or even the next hour.”
“One of the greatest things a person can do is risk his life for another’s,” Pellaton said. “It’s an awesome thing and something any of us is willing to do. It’s not just a motto to us, it’s the soul of the mission.”
