Medics Undaunted by Unknown Published Feb. 28, 2006 By Staff Sgt. Lara Gale 419th Fighter Wing Public Affairs HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah -- The flight surgeon and medical technician were on their way home from a deployment that had already stretched a month longer than planned when a phone call from their commander at the 419th Fighter Wing Medical Squadron gave them pause. “He said, ‘If you hang out there for awhile, I’ve got something good for you,” said Major Brian Duncan, flight surgeon with the 419th MDS. “So we decided to check it out.” And with that, Major Duncan and 419th MDS medical technician, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kennedy, unwittingly committed themselves to what would become something of an epic adventure in the wild, wild Middle East in the spring of 2002. Their initial deployment to Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan AB was routine, supporting Operation Southern Watch. The base had a golf course, comfortable lodging and a well-supplied, over-staffed expeditionary medical squadron. Nobody on the deployment was overly upset when the war in Iraq froze them in place –said Major Duncan. But after the initial phase of the war ended, most of the support personnel were ready to catch planes home to families and employers. Major Duncan and Sergeant Kennedy, who said they came to be in on the action, waited for word of their flight the other direction. They were expecting a week to prepare, but when the call came, the two had less than an hour to pack and board a C-130 bound Iraq. A mad scramble and a few hours later, the pair landed at Talil AB amidst complete darkness. Glow sticks met them on the ground as they were led to a group of tents and Security Forces Airmen wearing night-vision goggles emerged out of the thick blackness. The light just brought more confusion - nobody knew the medics were coming. The two men spent their first night on the floor of an old Iraqi bunker. When morning came, it was clear the place was not yet a bare base. It was just bare. “We were told it’s going to be austere, it’s going to be field conditions – but I don’t think anybody anticipated it would be so…bad,” Major Duncan said with a laugh. Medical personnel are trained to operate in bare-base conditions, but none of the tools they’re trained to operate with were available at this early stage of the game in Iraq. The two men had literally rolled in on the heels of victory – their flight was the first to land on the Talil runway after the air base was taken over by U.S. forces. Sergeant Kennedy was the first Air Force medical technician to land in Iraq following the war. Given the circumstances, nobody was poised to make things more comfortable for them. “We kept expecting more support,” Sergeant Kennedy said. “After about a week we kind of stopped asking.” Nothing like a little austerity to fuel innovation ... A tent with ponchos strung from the ceiling became the clinic. Whatever medical supplies they had been given in Saudi Arabia became their entire medical toolkit. “We just had what we brought on our backs,” Sergeant Kennedy said. Their medical practice for the first few weeks was made up of tent-calls to Airmen assigned to quarters. The clinic tent doubled as their sleeping quarters and was mostly just a place for treating minor problems, like dehydration and kidney stones. As for themselves, they didn’t bring enough of anything- uniforms, socks, t-shirts. They brought laundry detergent, but water was so scarce they didn’t use it. Major Duncan had the luxury of a pillow he’d stuffed into his bag, last-minute, on the way out of Prince Sultan. Sergeant Kennedy made do with his flak vest. The pair slept on the ground. “About the second week, we finally got cots to sleep on,” said Major Duncan. “That was the best thing.” Things continued to improve as the base population grew from 200 to more than 1,000. Before the month was out, a mobile clinic was set up on base and as Major Duncan and Sergeant Kennedy prepared to head home, a full medical staff arrived. The two hopped on the first available flight and more or less thumbed their way back to the United States, arriving unceremoniously, dirty and unshaven at Hill AFB almost four months after their initial return date. Both had made personal sacrifices – Sergeant Kennedy was parted from his five-month-old baby and Major Duncan took an 80 percent pay cut for the six-month tour. But both say they are glad to have been part of the historic moment. Both said they would do it over again if given the chance. “The unknown is always the most difficult,” Major Duncan said. “In retrospect, I wish we’d stayed longer.”