A member of the 66th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron and an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter pilot, US Air Force Major Dirk Johnson deployed to Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom from May to September 2002, serving as the unit's director of operations as well as flight lead on multiple combat search and rescue missions. "Our primary mission," he explained, "was to support the Joint Force Air Component Command in picking up downed air crew members. At the same time, we also did missions in support of other coalition forces and joint sister services to pick up anyone who was in need of personnel recovery." These included everyone from US Special Forces soldiers to Afghan children in need of immediate medical evacuation. "Since we were the primary rescue force for the whole coalition," Johnson said, "we were called upon to do anything." In addition, he discusses a wide variety of logistics issues and shares some of his unit's frustrations at not being allowed to fly as many missions as they wanted or were able to do. Regardless, though, “We were there to help out in any way possible and we actually got to do it. It was different from all my other experiences,” Johnson added, “because we always just sat on alert waiting for something to happen. This time we actually got to do our jobs, people called us to help, and we always would go. People had a tendency to call us first because we were always dependable over there. Hopefully, we made a good name for ourselves and just the satisfaction of saying, ‘We were able to go do it whenever someone asked us.’ And it’s always nice to help other people out,” he concluded, “especially our missions: we’re always called upon in a bad situation. If we go and get those guys out, we feel good because, ‘Hey, this didn’t happen.’ It’s satisfying in that regard.”

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