a graphic indictment of the moral bankruptcy of communism. hundreds of families forced to the streets when their homes are

sealed because they border west berlin. >> 13 august 1961 is when we woke up on a sunday and there was a wall there. >> the medics there to take care of anybody hurt along the wall. >> the fight against communism is ugly. from phillip, south dakota, 24-year-old patrick brady stationed in berlin as an army medic. >> another dash from the new red slave camp. >> the worst memory i have of those days in berlin was a training accident where a soldier fell off a tank and the tank ran over his head. i got sick when i looked at movies of needles for god's sake and training here. i couldn't deal with it. but that -- in the field it's different. you see the body and every possible configuration. >> but it was the vietnam war that changed brady's life. in 1963, he was selected for helicopter school and sent to

camp walters in texas. a year later, he shipped off with the detachment of the 54th medical bre gad. it was the first of the two tours of duty and where the dust-off legend was born. ♪ >> dust-off control. dust-off control. >> nearly 500,000 occasions those words turned to missions of rescue of a million patients. mostly americans. the bird brady flew, an huey helicopter. a uh 1h. >> jerked it and it took off. without that bird we could not have done the things we did in vietnam. unprecedented medical care and treatment and life saving in vietnam because of that wonderful machine. we had five dust-off aircraft in the country. we covered all of vietnam with five helicopters. when i got to vietnam, there were about 16,000 americans there. almost all our work was with

vietnamese casualties. the first year those five aircraft we carried a little over 4,000 patients. >> dust-off almost didn't happen if the beginning army politics nearly killed it. but one man had a vision. >> when i came to nam in january of 1964, i made charles kelly. charles kelly was veteran of three wars. he'd been court-martialed i think three times. probably the greatest man that i've ever known truly. great person. some people they called him mad man kelly, in fact. >> kelly believed that dedicated hueys should be useded as air ambulances. but a visiting commander wanted to take one of the precious birds away from the team. >> because we have a beautiful helicopter, commander wants that bird. he wants to put a portable red cross on it and use it for logistics that two of them used

to fight on cats and dogs. kelly says the only way to keep this resource is to prove that we can do this job better than no one else. so we began to fly at night. we flew in weather. we made pick-ups on the battlefield. we did things that no other aircraft in vietnam did or could do. >> charles kelly paid the ultimate price for dust-off. >> kelly's call out on a mission. and it's a secure area. supposedly secure area. they start receiving fire. so the people on the ground started to shout at kelly, get out, get out, we're drawing fire. kelly said not until i have your wounded. that was a last words he said, a bullet came through the open door through his heart and killed him on the spot. i don't know how to put it. probably the most fruitful battlefield death ever because his death saved dust-off. it was the greatest lifesaver in the history of warfare.

rescued around a million people in the vietnam war. because of charles kelly. >> patrick brady's call sign was 55 or double nickel. >> as soon as the mission came in, the guy in operations hit the buzzerment the buzzer was a jeep horn hooked to a battery. boom. went off once, the aircraft commander ran to the operation shack. nobody walked. got the mission sheet. told him where to go and what the deal was. meantime, the co-pilot in the aircraft. he runs and cranks the bird. we're off the ground in two minutes and we're enroute to the patient calling immediately to let them know that you're on the way because it's a great comfort then to them to know that you're on the way and that the wounded buddy's going to get taken care of. i should say, too, that while

the life saving was wonderful, we suffered a lot of casualties. the odds of a dust-off pilot being hurt in his work were about 1 in 3. it was the most dangerous kind of flying in vietnam. >> aboard the huey is a can-pilot, crew chief and medic. steve hook was all of 22 years old when he joined brady's team at the 54th. it was 1966 and the team now had six to bring in the wounded. you have a crew chief. there's no door mounted gun on that? >> no. >> is there a red cross on the side of it? >> yeah. one on each side, the top, in the front. beautiful targets. >> of course, the enemy doesn't look at the red cross, do they? >> beautiful target. >> i heard a rumor one time there was a reward from them. a dust-off helicopter down was a reward for them. >> how long before the helicopters started coming back with bullet holes in them and

rpg fragments in them and things like that? >> i think all six shot up on the same day. >> september 29th, 1966. just another one of patrick brady's 2,000 combat missions. the call was to rescue 11 american soldiers in a secured area. >> they misjudged the security of the area. we were sitting down, two enemy soldiers came up out of spider traps on each side of the aircraft, shot the crew chief and hook and i could see my crew chief hanging in the harness. i thought he was dead. i heard one shot and i heard the second shot as i was falling backwards into the cargo area. i thought my army was gone and burned and as i laid there, my hand was on my lap and i so wigged my fingers and thought it's still attached. i tucked it between my legs and just kind of looked around and a lot of thoughts coming through my mind in about three seconds.

but the main one was if we don't do what we came for, we have to come back. >> you're baddy wounded. you still in spite of your own wounds rushed across the battlefield to save the lives of other soldiers. some people would say that you really rose above and beyond the call of duedy. >> i crawled out of the helicopter and a bomb crater or an artillery hole. i headed for it. so i look around for hook and here he is back and forth across the battlefield dragging the patients to the aircraft. finally he gets all 11 of them on board and, of course, i can see his back is bleeding all over his back. he gets in the aircraft. here's 11 bodies stacked in the back and he's going through the bodies. he sees the crew chief in the harness and he saw some spurts

of blood and he knew he was still alive. >> i applied a tourniquet and i guess i drew it up too tight and he sat up and said, ow. i backed it off a turn. i could feel blood dripping off my elbow. >> he isn't treating his own wound. he's treetding the patient. i reach back and shake a patients, the soldier takes out the first aid pack and goes up and jams it in the back of hook's arm to stop the bleeding and hook continues to treat the patients. >> steve hook was awarded the silver star and returned to action where he would be wounded again. coming up, pay tri brady receive it is nation's highest award for have lor, the medal of honor.

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1968. while americans back home protested the vietnam war, now major patrick brady had more pressing problems in his second dust-off tour. he had 37 green pilots and a deadly change in terrain. >> this time we're not in the delta. we are in the mountains. most of the pilots who were killed in vietnam were killed because of weather or terrain, not enemy action. in the mornings you had a low valley fog that come up 500 or 600 feet and krofred the valleys. if the fighting was in that, you had a problem. in the afternoon you had plows covered the tops of the mountains. everybody in the unit except me, a commander and the first sergeant are brand new. 37 guys. every pilot graduated from flight school on the same day. all their names started with "s." inexperienced to say the least. >> as the war dragged into its

fourth year life at the 54th was a steady stream of nonstop wounded. >> most i ever carried in one day was 125. you know, we carried 4,000 patients a month on a daily basis, lots of pilots carried 50. >> they were flown in and surgeons like john hutton put the shattered bodies back together while they were still in the helicopters. >> corpsman was an accurate reporter. so you would start triaging them as they were enroute. we had a hard time sometimes disciplining to land one at a time. landing two at a time, very often it would lead to a rush to see who could get the emergency room first. >> the pressures were enormous. nearly everyone on dust-off with a lucky charm or a ritual. >> we had one guy that i don't think ever changed his t-shirt. you know? you did things in a routine way.

you would get -- you would strap yourself in a certain way. you would do things exactly in sequence every time and then if something went out of sequence, then you would be worried about it. i have a lucky helmet, too. >> beside the helmet and something he called his 30 caliber medal, faith was most important to patrick brady. >> this thing i've carried ever since then. i have it with me now. one side i had the picture of my children at the time. they were just little snots. but on the back is the prayer which i really carried. fear is a debilitating thing. it's something that you never want to have anything to do with. it's something that you send to the men my. faith for me was a substitute for my fear. fear is nothing more than your faith on trial. >> roger, roger.

how's the situation down there? how many rounds did you take? >> roger, we don't know. >> 1968, pay trick brady's faith and abilities as a pilotere tested to the limit. >> control, belistening. got 55 going in. >> you're listening to the only known recording of action that resulted in a medal of honor. on this day, each of the three choppers flown by brady were shot down by enemy fire. not even this would stop him from rescuing 51 wounded while flying in 0-0 weather. >> seemed like we were receiving fire as we set down in the left rear. >> the valley completely covered with fog. i start up the mountain. i'm wondering how in the heck am i going to get in there? i go ifr. i can't see anything. all off. break out. back up the mountain. fall off. break out. and i'm really worried. i thought i was going into the

trees. but i could see the tip of the rotor blade and i could see the top of the trees. so i know i got two reference points. i know i'm right side up. that's all i needed. >> for the daring rescue of those wounds, president nixon presented him with the medal of honor. our nation's highest award for valor. >> that was it. it was just one of those deals where somebody happened to see what i did and they appreciated it and they wrote it up. >> preparing those who will save lives on tomorrow's battlefields, we take you inside a flash and bang exercise next a flash and bang exercise next

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medic! ah! >> it's 0700 hours at fort sam

houston, texas. war day four for 91 bravo company is just getting started. >> this is a situational training exercise for our soldiers who are training to be combat medics. they are giving a scenario. they're come upon a mass casualty situation and provide emergency medical treatment and stabilization. >> relax, relax. relax. >> what we're done now is take the 91 bravo combat medic which are licensed nurse practitioners, combine them into one medical specialty which is the 91 whistle. it's more capable medic. they'll have more trauma skills than the basic combat medic. >> come on, guys. >> speed is of the essence. the golden six hours is now cut to one. according to fort sam houston's major general. >> probably heard of the concept

of the golden hour. we're now looking at why the soldiers die in the battlefield and a significant proportion of them die because they bleed to death first hour after their injury. you have to see them, get to them and resuscitate them. >> in simulated fire and chaos, the medics are trained to prioritize treatment of the wounded. >> do it, do it. don't tell me. do it. >> we try to get them to go through the same scenario every time and treating the injury opposed to jumping to the wound. and that is our main focus. it's to get them back on track. doing their patient casualty survey so that they're not missing anything that could be of a detriment to the patient. >> you don't where ccp is yet. where will you move them to? >> we have to get them out of danger point. that's where care is going to be given. >> the wounded are evacuated to a battalion, the most severely

loaded last to be offloaded first. there the abcs are used to re-evaluate. >> airway, breathing and circulation. the students go through airway. we go through breathing, whether or not they're breathing adequate or inadequate. c is circulation and then a blood sweep checking for major bleeding. >> somebody get that litter. >> when the patients get here, they have three dispositions, they're returned to duty, they will be e vacced to a higher medical facility or deceased. >> chemical weapons are out there. >> biological nightmare. >> chances of anthrax in the offices of three members of congress. >> biological and chemical warfare making headlines. saddam hussein used it in against his own people and in the persian gulf war our armed forces were prepared for whatever saddam might throw at them. >> three, two, one!

let's go, let's go. >> my experience in the desert training medical units particularly a hospital to manage chemical casualties was a real eye opener. they're a whole host of both biological and chemical weapons that are available to terrorists. we talk to all of our medics, nurses and doctors about recognizing and treating nurse agents, respiratory agents like mustard. >> this m-256 detector kit helps a soldier identify the type of agent being used in this exercise. >> what we do is we go out. we pop one of our kits and it tells you exactly what's out there. a different color will tell you what kind of agent that it is. it would call up to the headquarters and say we have a blister agent. >> america wages war on terrorism highly trained forward surgical teams are right there with the special operations troops. medics and soldier doctors

deploy with the green berets and rangers. as you can see from this, they're well prepared. >> we need to be prepared for 2010 and 2020. we will have broader lines of communication, soldiers may be isolated for longer periods of time. we're just starting to ramp up the 91 whiskeys. we needed to move toward a medic with more skills and could provide more on the battlefield literally at the fox. >> stay with me, oliver north, for more "war stories."

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♪ troops will always ask me, are we as good as in your day or the greatest generation? my answer always is, your

training is better. you're in beer ysical shape. you've got better equipment than we ever had. how you perform depends on what's inside. ♪ we can hum ha about vietnam and somalia and other places like that but this is real and this is at home and this is personal. and i think that will bring out the toughness in the american people. but will they be tough when the chips are down? and i think what i see going on in america today, there ain't no doubt about it. >> dr. william taylor of the 19th virginia regime wrote it was on the battlefield the assistant surgeon sternly tested. whatever he had, so it is today for the 80,000 men and women currently serving or training in military medicine. to them and their predecessors, we say thanks. theirs is a war story that

deserves to be told. xxxx that's tonight on "war stories."