3 airmen saved 2,100 Afghans from flood - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

3 airmen saved 2,100 Afghans from flood

JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, VA. — Lt. Col. Gregory “Boomer” Roberts, a rescue pilot, looked down at the flood water cresting and threatening to sweep away thousands of stranded Afghans in Kunar Valley.

He immediately knew the situation was dire — he had coordinated rescues in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

But this time, he was in one of two Russian-built Mi-17s, with two other American airmen and about 10 Afghans, for the rescue flight. As the Afghan National Police began to show up to secure the area, another group arrived — the Taliban.

That’s how the mission began for the crews in the unarmed helos, and it would continue for 48 hours.

A short mission

The mission was dubbed Afghan Rescue Flight 705, and it started as a small mission to save a dozen or so herders near Jalalabad. But it became one of the crown jewels of the Afghan adviser mission, with two airmen receiving Distinguished Flying Crosses and another nominated for an Airman’s Medal for saving the lives of more than 2,000 Afghans stranded by floods.

In summer 2010, monsoonal rains had flooded the Laghman and Kabul rivers. A call came in early on July 28 to Kabul Airport that 10 to 15 Kuchi herders needed to be rescued.

The Afghan general in charge selected Roberts and then-Lt. Col. Bernard “Jeep” Willi to team up with Afghan pilots for the mission. Willi knew that saving flood victims might require a hoist, something the Afghans weren’t able to operate. He picked then-Master Sgt. Kevin Fife for the job.

The mission would be a tough one for the less-skilled Afghan pilots and their Mi-17 helicopters. And as the weather grew poor and visibility worsened, the Afghan pilots began to drift apart from each other.

It became clear that Roberts and Willi would have to take the controls.

The flight came across the herders near the intersection of the two rivers. They picked up about 60 Afghans before returning to Jalalabad. But no sooner had the crew eaten lunch than another call came in from the city. By the end of the day, they had saved more than 300 victims.

Tired and worried about flying through bad weather back to Kabul, the crew took shelter for the night in an old Russian air control tower at a forward operating base near Jalalabad.

The biggest challenge for them was still ahead.

‘Bad guy land’

They were roused at 4:30 a.m. and told there would be another mission, and a big one. As Roberts and the crew tried to get a grasp of what they were being tasked with, an uneasy feeling set in. It became apparent the mission wasn’t in the relatively safe area surrounding Jalalabad; it was going to be in what Roberts calls “bad guy land”: the Kunar Valley near the Pakistan border.

Fife, Roberts and Willi discussed options with the Afghans. The Mi-17 was unarmed and the weather was atrocious, so there would be no support from allied aircraft.

But the decision was an easy one for the airmen. There were stranded people, and the airmen were the only show in town. They would have to fly into the heart of the Taliban with no support and armed only with their 9mm sidearms.

“We knew that going to Kunar was bad,” Fife said. “Every time we flew up there, we had been shot at. It was a heavily fortified Taliban area. We knew what we were getting ourselves into.”

Flying toward the valley, many thoughts raced through Fife’s head.

“Going through my mind was, ‘Are we going to get shot at?’ or ‘What are we going to face when we get there?’ I think that was going through everyone’s head. But unquestionably, we all knew what our job was up there,” he said.

A desperate scene

After helping a group of victims, the Taliban raised a flag to let the rescuers know they were present.

Even though the presence of Taliban was sinister, the Afghan interpreter told Fife they wouldn’t interfere with the rescue, something he found out from the rescued locals, he said.

In the cockpits, Roberts and Willi performed challenging maneuvers to rescue Afghans. At one point Roberts, according to his citation, had to hover within 10 feet of the wires on a suspension bridge to retrieve victims.

On one occasion, Willi saw nine men stranded on a concrete buttress in the middle of a flooded river that had once held up a bridge that had since been swept away. He thought about using the hoist, but he didn’t have a good reference point.

“I said OK, the only way I’m going to get these guys off this concrete piling is if I hover down and set a wheel on the piling,” Willi said. “

Willi brought the helicopter down long enough to get the men to step onto the aircraft.

“It was real motivating,” Willi said. “The [Afghans] on the other bank were watching this and after we picked them up, you could see them all cheering and applauding.”

Willi and the crew were making a pass at another rescue when they saw two men walk away from two children who were being dragged into the river. Fife jumped out of the helicopter and ran toward the kids, plunging chest-deep into the water.

“He’s got his body armor on, he’s got his helmet on, all his life support equipment he’s got on him, and he’s getting washed down stream, too,” Willi said. “Only he’s bigger than them. The kids are starting to get pulled downstream, but he was able to get to them in time.”

Willi said Fife had no idea when he went into the water how deep it was or if he’d be able to keep his feet under him. And that wasn’t the only time he jumped into the water — he was doing it all day.

Fife said the rescue of the kids, for which he has been nominated for an Airman’s Medal, is blurry to him because of all the things he did that day. But he remembers how he felt before jumping in after them.

“You know when you reach down deep and you say, ‘I’ve got to do this’?” he said. “That’s kind of where I was. It’s almost like a grunt, but a nonverbal grunt. I grunted inside and powered through it with the kids in my arms and said, ‘Let’s get this done.’.”

The rescue earned Fife a spot in the Air Force Chief of Staff’s Portraits in Courage. He said he’s proud to have the recognition, but he is most proud of the 2,100 people the flight saved that day.

“The Airman’s Medal is about those two kids, but there are 2,100 people who owe their lives and their livelihood to a crew of Afghans and Americans,” Fife said.

Win for local government

Brig. Gen. David Allvin, who commanded the air adviser mission in Kabul until August, said the skill shown by Roberts and Willi on that day was beyond most pilots in the world’s air forces.

But the mission was not just a story of courageous American airmen, but of Afghanistan’s progress toward a cohesive air force, Alvin said. The Afghans requested the mission, Afghans secured the site, and Afghans helped pilot the helicopters.

Nonetheless, the airmen proved to the Afghans that they were willing to sacrifice for their safety, he said

“Obviously, there was a tactical impact: over 2,000 that were rescued,” Allvin said. “But really, it was a message from our airmen and from those in the NATO Air Training Command to the Afghan air force, the Afghan security forces and to the government of Afghanistan that we’re not only providing you with equipment ... we’re putting our lives on the line, our airmen on the line, for a joint cause that is both yours and ours.”

Allvin said missions such as these, eventually to be led and coordinated by the Afghans, would decide the outcome of the conflict.

“Here’s a case where you had Mi-17s with Afghan air force emblems on them,” Allvin said. “You had our airmen helping, but it had an Afghan face on it, Afghans helping other Afghans. And in the distance, here are the Taliban and they couldn’t do anything. In this case, it’s a clear win for the government of Afghanistan.”

‘God is very happy’

The airmen who pulled off the rescue still keep in touch. Willi recently pinned on colonel and is stationed at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross on Oct. 31.

Roberts is now at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on Nov. 10.

Fife, who is now a senior master sergeant stationed at RAF Lakenheath, England, is still awaiting notification if he will be awarded the Airman’s Medal. Looking back on the mission, he said, it’s hard to believe. “Never in a million years would I have dreamed that what happened over those two days would have happened,” he said.

As dusk fell July 29, the flight received word of another rescue needed outside of Jalalabad.

It was a false alarm.

“Command and control is one of those things we’re still working on with the Afghans,” Willi remembered.

He recalled being exhausted as he flew back to home base. He had been flying nearly nonstop since sunrise the previous day, but he was alert enough to note the magnificent evening sky.

“We were heading west to Kabul and the sun was setting,” he said. “I remember the rays of the sun poking through the clouds and my Afghan pilot looking at me and saying through the interpreter, ‘God is very happy with what we’ve done today.’ It was such a beautiful sunset.”