Darrell's weblog

I’m heading back home tonight, finally, but I almost got stuck out here for another 4 days.

Last night we took off on a normal resupply mission up a particular river valley, but roughly halfway into the flight, we received a radio call that an American soldier had fallen into the river during a training exercise, and we were asked to assist search and rescue activities. We immediately put our routine mission on hold and began flying up and down the river looking for the lost soldier. After three grueling hours of searching (in the dark, with no moonlight, and storms approaching) we were relieved by a pair of Army aircraft with much better equipment, so we stopped to refuel. We ended up getting stuck at the refuel point for several hours as thunderstorms rolled through. We normally never fly during the day, for safety reasons, so the concern was that we would have to spend the night at the remote location, meaning that I would probably miss this evening’s flight home. The weather broke around 4am, and so we took off and were able to make our way back to base, although over an hour of the flight back was spent in broad daylight. In total, were were out for 10 hours and flew for 6.6 hours.

None of the aircraft or ground personnel involved were able to locate the lost soldier in the dark. His body was recovered a few hours after sunrise, about 5 miles downriver from where he fell in, meaning we must have flown over him at least 6 times and not seen him. What a crappy way to end my trip.