I have been following your posting and articles about the dust-off situation. I have some further information you might be interested in. I deployed to Afghanistan in May of 2009 as a member of Marine Aircraft Group-40 out of Cherry Point, NC. The Commanding Officer was Col. Kevin S. Vest. We were part of the Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade commanded by BGen. Lawrence Nicholson and his medical representatives were Senior Chief Shannon Dittlinger and LCDR Diana Loffgren both are stationed at the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, NC at the present time.

The reason I am writing has to do with deployment. Myself and 20 other Navy Corpsman were deployed as a Causality Evacuation Team to perform point of injury evacuation via CH-53 Super Sea Stallions during this deployment. Well a long story short, we spent 10 months sitting on our asses because of the political game played by the Army and NATO. We flew a causality evacuation corpsman on every single CH-53, day and night during those ten months. We treated one injury and that was because the pilot chose to ignore the rules and pick two wounded service members up without authorization. The majority of the time we were either already at a place where a service member was injured, or within a few minutes of flight time. We were told we could not pick the patients up, that dust-off had to do it. So with notification, spinning the bird up, and flight time it might have been another 20 minutes before dust-off arrived. We could have already had the injury evacuated by the time dust-off took off.

So, in reality 20 corpsman who trained for a mission deployed to do a mission and the military spent at least $10,000 each (maybe more) to train us and get us gear did nothing related to the mission. People probably died because of the policies that were and still are in place.

I hope you have finally been able to get some of this typical gobbly gook looked at by those who can make a difference. Where is common sense? Where is caring about doing the job right and not the power? Is the whole world corrupted by power and control? You've done a great job and I for one am proud of you.

I think most Americans want armed medic flights at all times. These are our sons and daughters & grandchildren on those Hueys and Blackhawks. Politicans and Army Pentagon Brass wake up and arm our medic helicopters at all times. I may be Deaf and use American Sign Language, not eligible for the military but if I get married and have kids or my nephews & nieces sign up or are drafted into the military. I demand armed medic flights at all times, not just for my kids or my nephews & nieces but all American lives matter too.