President's Message

Greetings to all DUSTOFFers, friends, and family. Being your first enlisted president overwhelms me. To follow in the footsteps of the great aviators is truly an honor. I promise to make this year the best ever and hope that you help by going out and finding more and more members. This is truly a great organization that can be made even better by getting more of the new generation aviators and enlisted crewmembers to share in our legacy. The DUSTOFF Association has made enormous strides since its inception, and we can make it even greater.

Reunion 2002 Update

MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW! The dates of the 2002 Reunion have been set tentatively as 22­24 February 2002. The Army Medical Evacuation Conference is set to coincide with the end of our reunion. The AMEC is tentatively scheduled for 25 February­1 March 2002.

The scheduling of reunions in San Antonio is a real challenge, since this area is a very popular with tourists. As a result of serious scheduling challenges at the Holiday Inn ­ Riverwalk, the site of our next reunion will be the Marriott Northwest Hotel, the former Holiday Inn NW where we held our past reunions. MORE

Operation Ivory Soap

Once in a while, the news will carry a 50-plus-year-old untold story of our forgotten heroes of World War II, a forgotten medal not awarded, an army regiment based at a remote outpost in the Pacific, outnumbered and fighting like hell just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and many others. One such story represents the foundation of the DUSTOFF mission. This story begins aboard a Liberty ship on June 16, 1945, in the Philippine Islands. It is one of the great untold stories of World War II.  MORE

DUSTOFF Assn. Honors Eminent Bravery

DUSTOFF, word that meant first aid wasnıt the last hope for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. It is also the name and glory of a national association of current and former Army Medical Department enlisted members and officers, aviation crewmembers, and others engaged in or actively supporting Army aeromedical evacuation in any capacity. The essence of courage that epitomizes DUSTOFF permeated the atmosphere at a banquet for members of the DUSTOFF Association. MORE

Boundless Bravery - Foundation of DUSTOFF History

THE HISTORY OF DUSTOFF is recorded in the annals of the Center for Military History and at the DUSTOFF Association Web site. They chronicle in detail the drama and developments that heralded the legacy of aeromedical evacuation during the Vietnam War know as DUSTOFF. The seeds of the legacy began long before, however, with little known events from an unlikely quarter. Historians record that, from 1950 through early 1954, French air ambulances in Vietnam evacuated about 5,000 casualties, but the US Army used only a few helicopters for medical evacuation at the end of World War II. MORE

57th Med Co Helps USAF Airlift Sailor From Croatia to Germany

It started with a telephone call on the morning of November 1, 2000. The night before, on Halloween, an American sailor had fallen forty feet off of a wall and woke up ten hours later in a Croatian hospital. The sailorıs ship, the U.S.S. George Washington, an aircraft carrier, was anchored less than a mile off shore from the coastal town of Dubrovnik, Croatia. The telephone call was from the shipıs doctor to an American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. The doctor pleaded for help for his badly injured shipmate; the sailor needed medical care beyond what was available from the small local hospital or aboard the ship. After exhausting all other options, the hospital in Germany then called on 'The Original DUSTOFF.' The 57th Medical Company (Air Ambulance) is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The unit is nicknamed ³The Original Dustoff² because it was the first helicopter ambulance unit to exist in the U.S. military. The 57th Medical Company has been an Air Ambulance unit since the early days of the Vietnam War. Today the 57th has fifteen UH-60A Black Hawk helicopters and more than 100 personnel. Six of those aircraft, along with crews and support personnel are deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in support of Operation Joint Forge.

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