Mayday, Mayday!

Heroes Remember

Mayday, Mayday!

Transcript

That tour was fabulous. In Afghanistan I was there as a nurse in the Roto 3 Military Medical Unit, MMU, Roto 3 hospital sorry, and I worked in the trauma base and I worked on the general ward because I am a generalist. And then a couple months in the medic that was flying medivac with the Dust-off which is the American Black Hawk squadron, he left theatre. And so they didn’t have anyone else to translate the medical report and I was the trained flight nurse so I went and got seconded off to work with Dust-off for the remainder of my tour. So I flew with the Black Hawk squadron to sight of injury. We had a lot of fantastic days, I remember one day we were training the Afghan flight medic, how to be a flight medic, and we were aboard and that was fantastic. Unfortunately we had an adverse event that day. We took a small arms fire took out our rotor. We had a “mayday, mayday, mayday!” and landed in Taliban territory. So we were with our aircraft downed for, well first off we transferred the patient that was with us. He was an alpha patient which means absolute critical, must get to care. So we had to chase Black Hawk with us so we put him on that bird and off they went to the hospital. But we were then left with no gun shift, with no support in the middle of the Taliban territory. We were there about an hour and a half before the quick reaction force showed up and the quick reaction force was fantastic. They showed up, thank goodness they had water because we only had so much water with us. I got to tell you we flew with more water from then on. You just didn’t think about it right? And I will say that my time with the infantry came back to me while we were on the ground because we had to do a perimeter and maintain and all those skills, yes we learned a little bit of that in basic training as officers but not as much. But we trained it all the time in the reserves when I was with the infantry and exactly, the Americans did it exactly the same we did. When they called the order it was the same order. We were to do the same thing. We were to do the same left and right ark, it was fantastic to see actually when you look back at it. It was really neat. So then we got flown out of there finally we got out of there and I remember when they brought us back to another camp where we waited for transport back to Kandahar. And when I finally got to Kandahar I will never forget that my best friend, like my best friend on tour who was my friend at the time she was waiting on the airfield crying her eyes out when we landed but the funny thing is nobody else knew or seemed to care and to this day nobody knows or seems to care. My best friend Laura has tried I don’t’ know how many times to try and get some sort of notice that this actually happened and it’s like, no, nobody. It’s almost like nobody wants to admit it happened. I don’t know why, it’s just or maybe it’s just not significant enough to other people but it was to me.

Description

Speaking of the roles and responsibilities while on duty, Nursing Officer Crew tells of the unfortunate incident of finding themselves in Taliban territory when a mayday operation develops.

Rhonda Crew

Rhonda Crew was born August 25, 1970 in Moncton, New Brunswick. Crew first joined the reserves as a 17-year-old, becoming one of the first women in an infantry regiment, the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders Regiment of Cornwall, Ont. Then, after going to nursing school and working in the civilian world for a few years, she rejoined the military in 1997. Almost immediately, she was serving as a flight nurse on helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Crew accepted deployments to Bosnia 1999 and Afghanistan in 2007, holding rank of Lt. Colonel Nursing Officer and still serving today in the capacity of Canadian Armed Forces Nursing Officer. Stricken with PTSD during her time in military, Crew finds a positive approach in dealing with the effects and has recently been chosen as part of Team Canada for Invictus 2018! Rhonda and husband Duane, also a CAF Veteran now reside in Stittsville, Ontario.

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