"The Gamest Bastards of All"

Each week, U.S. Army Major Paul Bloomquist writes his parents in Salt Lake City the same kind of letter. "The surfs good," he tells them. "The weather's fine. The beaches are beautiful." All the same, "Big Bear" Bloomquist will hardly miss the swimming when his turn comes to go home.

No Place for Sentiment. With 40 other pilots and crewmen of MEDEVAC (for medical evacuation team), Bloomquist has one of the most taxing and perilous assignments in South Viet Nam. Cruising above the battlefields in search of the wounded, MEDEVAC's helicopters fly a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, every week of the year. In 18 months of duty in South Viet Nam, burly, green-eyed Major Bloomquist, 32, has flown 750 combat missions, been wounded three times, won 27 citations.

In the process, he has rescued 800 wounded soldiers and carted home more corpses than he cares to remember. To help counter the pervasive stench of death and mutilation, MEDEVAC pilots and crewmen stuff their nostrils with Vicks VapoRub. And they are curiously unwilling to make friends with infantrymen. "You don't want to get too close to people when you know tomorrow they may be dead," Bloomquist explains. "There's no place for sentiment in this business."

Yet the job takes plenty of heart as well as guts, and the MEDEVAC teams are known throughout South Viet Nam as "the gamest bastards of all." Their deep-chested, $250,000 "Huey" choppers (capacity: ten patients each) have evacuated 8,864 wounded troopers--, Vietnamese and American--since 1962.

Through the end of last year, fully 20% of the personnel in Bloomquist's detachment had been killed in action and an other 45% wounded, even though their unarmed, unarmored ships are clearly marked with red crosses on their noses.

As Bloomquist grimly says: "The red cross makes us that much better a have been higher but for the consummate skill of the MEDEVAC pilots. During one recent battle, Bloomquist found himself swooping in behind four fighter-bombers to pick up seven wounded Americans. Suddenly one of the escorting Skyraiders burst into flames from a ground hit, and its partners peeled away to protect it. All alone, Bloomquist's chopper--call sign "Dust-off 174"--touched down amid wither ing crossfire from Viet Cong .50-cal. machine guns. Bloomquist ordered his crew to load the wounded, calmly polished his sunglasses, then rotated out in a hail of tracers.

Though he volunteered for another tour of duty last December and refused to take a leave during the first 15 months he was in Viet Nam, Big Bear Bloomquist admits: "I've been here too long." Why does he stay? "Because," he explains slowly, "I like the excitement. And because I think that my crew and I can do this job better than anyone else. It's the job that counts above all, and it's a job that somebody has to do."

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