Reserve combat search and rescue featured on Smithsonian Channel in December

  • Published
  • By Capt. Cathleen Snow
  • 920th Rescue Wing Public Affairs
PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFNS) --  Air Force Reserve combat search and rescue Airmen are featured in a newly released documentary titled, "The Taliban Gambit," for their heroic actions. The documentary will be airing on the Smithsonian Channel throughout December.

Deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, nearing the end of their deployment in June 2005, Airmen from the 920th Rescue Wing here were called upon to find and rescue a Navy SEAL who was the sole survivor of the largest loss of life in the special forces community since the Vietnam War.

"Nothing prepared me that day for what I saw under my night-vision goggles on that mountain side in Afghanistan ... the world outside my rotor tips came to a complete stop as our  (pararescuemen) met with the Navy SEAL and took the time to painstakingly pin the American flag on the body bag of the fallen member we were sent to recover," said Lt. Col. Kurt Matthews, an HH-60G Pave Hawk pilot and the 308th Rescue Squadron commander here.

"It didn't matter that the Marines were shelling the next valley over, or that the A-10 (Thunderbolt IIs) were striking targets on our route as we came in and out of the landing zone; all that mattered was the proper respect be paid for our brother-in-arms," Colonel Matthews said.

Although U.S. forces were unsure at the time if any of the SEALs had survived the conflict, their mission was to fly their HH-60s into some of the most inhospitable territory in the world, to find out.

Not only did the Airmen find and pull out the only survivor of the ordeal, Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, but to keep with the U.S.'s policy to leave no servicemember behind, they went back in to the hostile region, to recover the bodies of his three fallen servicemembers.