The first grenade missed the Chinook. The Taliban shot at the Chinooks all the time with RPGs. It was almost always a miss. But the second RPG struck the helicopter’s tail rotor assembly. The Chinook plunged tail first. The pilot pushed hard on the cyclic stick to tilt the helicopter forward. As he did, he felt the craft leveling off. But it was too late. The Chinook smashed into the ground in a dry creek bed near Logar River, the force of the impact ripping off the pilot’s night vision goggles. The front rotor shattered, and the back pylon sheared off. One engine flew off, and the other caught fire.
The crash killed everyone onboard the helicopter, except for Ethan Ross, the sole survivor. His commanding officer, Captain Tom Ramos, was among the first to arrive at the crash site. Despite the critical injuries to his spinal cord, Ramos and a medic stabilized Ross and then medevacked him to Bagram, where a C-17 airlifted Ross to Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center further stabilized him for transport back to the United States and then sent him on to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. There surgeons performed three surgeries on his spine. Ross awoke a month later.
One of the first people Ross saw after awakening was a man wearing a white lab coat with a black plastic name tag identifying him as Dr. Gerald Wright. Wright told him because of the severity of his injuries, the Army would medically discharge him following his recovery. When Ross asked why the Army had sent a doctor instead of an admin type to tell him his military career was over, Wright smiled and said he wasn’t a doctor, he was there to offer him a job.
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