That Others May Live
Members of the 3rd Air Rescue Squadron watch as their comrades warm up two H-5 helicopters in preparation for a mission to the front lines in March 1952. The Emergency Hospital is in the background.
Early that Wednesday morning, June 25, 1952, rescue helicopter pilot Captain Wayne Lear from Santa Ana, California and Medical Technician Bobby Holloway from Ruston, Louisiana, of the Third Air Rescue Squadron, Detachment One, had begun a ten-day tour of duty with the 8055th MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).
The MASH was located not far from the front lines northeast of the squadron’s headquarters at K-16, the Seoul Municipal Airport.
They were to spend the next ten days transporting wounded soldiers or downed pilots to the hospital from an advanced “strip” just behind the bomb line—in reality a collection of tents and supplies grouped in a dry rice paddy just behind the front lines.
After being on call all day for whatever rescue mission might be needed, at dusk, they would fly back to the MASH, where they slept in a ten-man tent and ate with the hospital staff.
The food was very good, Holloway later recalled.
They had left the relative comforts of the MASH early that morning in an H-5 “Dragonfly” helicopter, number 49-2000.
At the “base” just a few miles behind the lines, they landed near some tents that served as an Operations Office, shut down the engine, topped off the fuel, and waited for any rescue missions that might be assigned to them by the JOC in Seoul. This was only the second time that medic Holloway had been on call for pilot rescue duty—”pilot pickup” they called it.
On standby, they waited near their aircraft.