I'm Ursula Perry, and I am here with an incredible honor and privilege.

In just a moment, I'm going to introduce for the first time for many of you, a true American hero, one that you may never have heard about.

And while our history books are full of important events and elections, personalities as well as world struggles, rarely can they delve as deeply as they could.

And this story is one of those that should be in the history books.

So the name of the man that I'm interviewing today is not a household word yet, but I'm hoping that after you hear his story, you will help him become one.

And here's why.

If you ever needed an emergency medical care visit, if you have desperately called for an ambulance, perhaps even been airlifted.

Then you want to meet Major General Patrick Brady and you want to thank him too.

Brady was part of a rare breed of military leaders who revolutionized the air ambulance under the most difficult of circumstances.

Major general Pat Brady has a Congressional Medal of Honor honoree for his feats of heroism during the war in Vietnam.

And I am very pleased to have you here with us today.

My pleasure.

I hate to say this, but a dying breed, right.

There's not too many of you guys left to tell this story.

No, there's, 60, 60 recipients.

When I came in.

We had close to 300.

They went back to.

I hate to say this, but they went back to the Boxer Rebellion, World War One, to Korea, Vietnam, and right up to the young guys we have today from the global war on terror.

Well, we're real happy to have you here with us today, because your story is one that everyone needs to hear.

A lot of times we just assume that things that happened back in the 60s or 70 don't affect us now, but this is one subject matter that actually does every day.

Because you were part of an important group that saved thousands upon thousands.

Well, how many lives do you think that the air ambulance service in Vietnam saved?

I can tell you almost exactly the the desk staff in about a nine and a half year period rescued almost 1 million souls men, women, children, enemy as well as friendly and a few scout dogs.

It was probably the most effective and efficient battlefield operating system ever.

Your chances of survival if you were shot in a jungle in Vietnam, or greater than if you were in an accident in a highway in America.

That's how how effective and efficient this dust off system was.

So let's explain that term dust off.

I had to learn a little bit about it because it originated with your predecessor.

Correct?

It in Vietnam, he kind of developed the whole idea and set the stage for all those who would follow now.

That's true.

Charles Kelly was my boss.

My first tour in 1964.

He was a World War Two veteran.

He'd been court marshal like, three times.

Oh, really?

And, in World War two.

And had a little gumption.

He had a little lot of gumption.

And he came to Vietnam to command the only helicopter unit in the country, the 57th.

And at the time, the mission was strictly Americans.

We had about 16,000 Americans in Vietnam at that time.

And so we had a general in charge of all the forces in Vietnam named Stilwell, Joe Stilwell.

He was the son of the famous, Vinegar Joe Stilwell.

We called him Cider Joe, but not to his face.

And he and Kelly were both World War Two guys, so he wanted to take our helicopters and use them for ash and trash.

And then when a a patient came up, put a portable red cross on it and go get the patient.

Now that makes no sense at all.

And only a grunt could come up with a great idea like that.

So Kelly was pissed to say the least.

So he and that general, he's a major.

He and that general used to go boom boom.

Knocking heads.

Knocking heads.

And so Kelly came back and told us, he says if we don't prove that we can do this better than anybody else, we'll lose the resource.

And so he went to work flying night and day.

Not just Korean Americans, but carrying the Vietnamese people and the enemy.

Number of hours he flew a month was unprecedented.

And but we were also getting our aircraft shot up a lot.

But we were carrying a lot of patients, and we're saving a lot of lives.

And so he was still in the battle, was still.

Well.

And so then one day he got called into an area that was supposed to be secure.

And when he was landing after he landed, they started to receive a lot of fire.

And so the people on the ground screamed at him, get out, get out, get out!

And his dying words were, when I have.

You're wounded.

He took a bullet right through the heart.

The helicopter destroyed the helicopter.

There was a physician on board because they wanted to pick up an American.

Declared him dead on the spot.

And so that his death.

Those final words.

When I have your wounded, set the standard for dust off.

To this day, every air ambulance unit in the world uses that callsign dust off.

And by the way, it's just arbitrarily picked from.

And so I a signal operating instruction just for one battle.

And that's interesting because you can conjure up all kinds of reasons why it would be called to dust off, because when a helicopter lands it.

That was that was kind of part of it.

I think.

But it was actually picked arbitrarily by Kelly's predecessor for a particular operation, and they had some casualties.

And so as a result of that, people then after that, they knew if somebody got hurt, they just had to dust off.

No kidding.

Yeah.

So your predecessor dies, shot in enroute to rescue some injured, terrible enemy fire.

The most difficult of circumstances.

You're sitting behind a desk, and you got to take over now.

Well, he promised me.

He had moved two aircraft to the Delta.

That's where the action was.

He wanted to be where the action was.

And he wanted to prove that we could do this job better than anybody else.

And he promised me that I could come down to the Delta and take over detachment A two aircraft.

On 1st July 1864.

Well, it's getting close to 1st July, and he's, As a matter of fact, he was killed on 1st July 1964.

I spent that night in his bunk.

I was called in to the Italian commander's office.

The next morning.

We got the patients out.

We got the patients out, I went down.

We heard that Kelly was down.

I headed out, I didn't even get a copilot.

I headed out for the Delta.

And on the way, they said, Kelly's out.

And so I pulled up.

I thought, it's all over.

He's fine.

Everything is cool.

And I pulled up behind our ship had been long.

Another dust off helicopter, and the, one of the pilots was leaning up against it, and he was crying.

And so I walked up to him.

I was in a good mood, and, I said, Ernie, what?

And he says, Kelly.

And he nodded his head and behind him was a body bag.

And that was Kelly.

And so then the operation officer comes up and says, hey, you guys, the patients are still out there.

So Ernie and I jumped in another helicopter and we went out and got the patient.

No time to grieve.

No time to grieve.

No.

And and they thought we were crazy.

They call him mad man Kelly.

That was his name.

And so in the Delta.

But entire villages would turn out when he wouldn't.

Now think about this.

These poor people living, in farms, dirt floors, etc.

and you got, at this time, this very expensive machine coming in to pick up their wounded and take him to the hospital.

They really appreciated that.

And the entire village would turn out.

He got to be very, very famous.

We didn't know how famous he was until he died.

Stillwell, when he heard that Kelly was dead, broke down and cried.

Wow.

I had a lot of respect for him, too.

And General Westmoreland was at the funeral, and, Stillwell and all the generals I was I was a pallbearer.

And all the, Vietnamese generals were all there.

And from that moment on, nobody said one word about portable red crosses.

That was it.

And they started bringing in more dust off helicopters.

And our patient load then really grew.

Big shoes to fill.

And you did fill them.

I mean, from what I have read, I mean, there's you've got a book on Amazon all about it.

Yes.

How many medals do you have?

I don't know.

Maybe I counted 18 that I saw as a master Army aviator badge on down to Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service cross, Legion of Merit.

You got one purple heart.

One.

That's enough, that's enough.

Bronze star medal, air medal, Army commendation medal, meritorious, Meritorious Service Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Army overseas.

Anyway, we could go on and on.

Yeah, there's like 80 of them, right?

Those are I was there, I saw the show.

A lot of those medals are you know, I was just there.

But the important ones are the, the, the medals that you get for rescuing people.

And, and I've got total, I think, counting the air medals.

I've got 53 or 54 Air medals, which, which is based on the number of combat missions you flew.

I flew in like 2500 combat missions and helped rescue about 5000.

So in the course of that, you get a lot of air medals and, so that makes about 80, some 80 some medals that I've got.

I was reading a little bit about your book, Dead Men Flying.

This is about Kelly and the origins of Dust Off.

Just an incredible life saving operation.

This is the the dust off story.

Every war that we've ever been in, there has been a unit or people who have been awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

Well, guess what?

Eight years ago I wrote, Bill, thanks to Senator Cornyn and his office for a Congressional Gold Medal for dust off crews in Vietnam.

Eight years.

Guess what?

They passed it.

Oh, congratulations.

I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Well, I was reading about that as well.

I was going to bring that up.

So it is now a done deal.

It's done.

Well, we got to have the president sign it.

But the hard the hard part is done.

Now if we can get the guy to sign it, then, then they'll, they'll strike a medal and, it will recognize, what?

You know, the the reason I wrote the book, I came back and most of us just went about our business.

I was in the Army.

I continued my career.

Most of my fellow soldiers did the same thing.

And we had a clerk in the unit, and he kept track of the patients, and an aircraft shot up and everything, and he sent that to me.

Wow.

And so I looked at it and it said in a nine and a half month period, the 54th helicopter ambulance, my unit, my second tour rescued over 21,000 patients nine and a half months, the whole Korean War.

They only, rescued like 17,000.

It was costly.

We had an aircraft shot up every 4 or 5 days and 26 Purple Hearts in that unit, but nobody killed some of them or shot more than watch.

And so and I was I was trying to do the math on that.

So let's see 2020 1000.

Patient.

Over the course of almost ten months.

That's ten months.

Yeah.

That's over 2000 patients a month.

That's right.

Saved.

Yeah I did that in my book.

I go through the numbers more carefully.

But it was we flew.

We flew like 20 some missions a day.

16 hours a day.

Wow.

For missions at night.

Now, let me say that that was not just us, not just that one unit.

Every other desktop unit in Vietnam was doing the same.

And that's how you get a million rescues in, in a in a ten month, ten year.

Period.

That's incredible.

I, we need to talk about this a little bit because a lot of us, you know, we like I grew up watching Mash, you know and that was Korea.

But that was an airlift of oftentimes of patients.

What you guys did, though, took it to like extreme levels because you went in under fire.

Yeah.

This was, not necessarily, something the military thought was a safe activity.

And sometimes you broke the rules and said, no, I'm going in anyway.

And that is why you are wearing that medal, congressional Medal of Honor, because you went above and beyond and showed people how it could be done.

Well, we we learned we didn't know a lot.

You know, we had to we had to figure out the way that we were going to get into er the.

Techniques.

And the techniques and everything to keep from getting shot because it does, you know, good if you go in and you destroy your aircraft and you don't get the patients.

So but we learn by trial and error.

And so we developed tactical techniques and I can tell you about a couple of them, if it's not going to bore you to death.

I don't think it will.

I mean, like for instance, I was reading one of them where, everybody was fogged in, but you knew there were injured in this one area under fire, so you had to sneak in under the the cover of fog, not let the.

By the time the enemy figured out you were there, you were gone.

I was gone.

Well, that's the that's the mission on the day that I got the medal.

But it's not the mission that I discovered.

The technique.

We went back the second tour.

Delta flat, a lot of force landing areas.

Now we're actually mountains.

Dangerous.

By this time, we were losing more crew to weather and night than we were to the enemy.

We were killing ourselves more than he was killing us.

I got 1012 young sworn officers.

Never been in combat before.

Could hardly start the thing.

But I knew they were going to go for the patient no matter what.

But the weather will kill them.

The night will kill them unless they know what they're doing.

So I'm praying like crazy because we were losing so many pilots at the time, and I get a call one day for, a troop that's on a mountaintop, where they had the outpost and he'd been bit by a snake.

And the weather on the mountain top came down about 1500 feet, but the valley was clear.

So I went out under it and I started into it.

And if you don't have two reference points, you don't know if you're upside down or right side up.

I got disoriented, I knew I could fall off in the valley back up again, but third time the guys on the ground are screaming, he's going in and dashed off.

Please hurry, hurry.

There's no radar, there's no let down, there's no nothing, just your eyeballs.

And so I said to my guys one more time, guys, we've got to try one more time.

So I came around and I had my window open on the side, and I was blown sideways.

And so I was looking out the window for a hole in the jungle because I thought we were sure surely going to crash.

But guess what?

I can see the tip of my roller blade and I can see the top of the tree.

I know I'm right side up, so I turned that sucker sideways, brought it to a hover and went up.

You can see about 20ft.

You were going up.

Sideways.

Yeah.

You're on a mountain.

You know.

They say when they write about it, they say he blew the fog away.

Yes.

Where the hell did it go?

I mean, you can't blow it away, but you can see 20ft if you got two reference points.

So we got that kid and we got him to the hospital.

And from that point on, day weather was not a problem.

I knew how to do it.

And so that was a technique I used on the day that I got the medal for 3 or 4 of those missions that day, because I knew I could slip into that stuff sideways.

And as long as I had a trail or as long as I had a tree, and as long as I could see my rotor blades, I had two reference points and I could work my way through that stuff.

A lot of people watching this might be surprised to learn that not only did you develop these techniques, but you flew under fire.

Your aircraft oftentimes would be disabled, and you would find a way to get back to base, get a new helicopter and head back out again.

I mean, the idea that you would just keep going after it fail, come back, go get another helicopter, head back out again.

Well, you know what could be worse than not?

And the come back without the patient.

Well, and you did it over and over again, and you got it right.

Not only me, but everybody in my unit.

The day the.

And I would not have remembered that day if it had not been for some great people on the ground that appreciated what I did, took the time to write it up.

And that's how I got the medal.

That's how I got all my medals, because somebody appreciated what you did, not because if you did anything spectacular, the guys in my unit were doing the same thing that day.

I used three helicopters.

On another day I use four and nobody saw it.

I couldn't get anything for.

So you're lucky that at least somebody was taking notes on some of those days.

Yeah.

Another day I used three and my copilot was shot, and we still got the patients out.

But, and so what?

We got the patient out.

You ever get a scratch on your hand?

On my body?

Yeah.

Yes, but not serious.

Not serious.

I get hit, and we we were on a night mission and an a1 e an Air Force craft had crashed in the Delta.

You could see a long ways in the Delta.

We could see the crash on fire.

And we were hoping that the pilot got out.

And it turned out that he did.

And so we went into the crash site where there was a quad 50 and the damn crash site, and they just blew us up.

They hit they blew the top off the helicopter, but they blew a bunch of flesh glass into my my eyes and my co-pilot's pants were set on fire.

But we found a place to sit down, and and I had to go see a flight surgeon.

And that's automatic Purple Heart.

I mean, that doesn't compare to a guy that lost an arm.

We got the same medal.

It's just not.

It's just not the same.

Yeah, well, it was incredibly dangerous what you did.

And like you said you were, you were in a large group of people who were doing it.

And when they came home to the United States, of course, it was quite a different reception from maybe what they'd had in World War Two and Korea and so forth.

But the interesting thing, at least from my point of view, I'm from a very small type town in Louisiana called Lafayette, Louisiana.

And there it's right in the heart of Cajun country.

And all those pilots came back from Vietnam, and they decided they were going to start an air ambulance service.

Oh, in Lafayette.

And they also started a company called Petroleum Helicopters.

And they used your techniques that you're talking about to rescue people off of offshore oil rigs in the middle of the Gulf, in terrible weather and hurricanes and evacuating people out of rising waters.

In the event and in any event that that company was called Acadian Ambulance, and a lot of our viewers are going to recognize it because Acadian Ambulance is now pretty much, you know, nationwide.

But it started in Lafayette, Louisiana, because of what you're talking about.

Because of Vietnam.

Some of our pilots came back.

One of our parish came back and did that.

Another pilot flew in the lumber thing, and he was killed.

But a lot of the pilots went to to the kind of rescue work that police do, and the different ambulance units do a crash.

And the military got involved and they called the Maspero program Military assistance for Safety and Traffic.

And so the civilians would give us their great equipment, oxygen, all that stuff, and we would give them our aircraft to fly civilian casualties missions.

And it went on for a while, very effective.

So after the Vietnam War, the the whole idea of air ambulance service dramatically changed in the United States.

And so no longer was did you you had that disparity between your more likely to survive in Vietnam than you were in the United States in the event of a car crash.

Now that technology and that modernization of ambulance work.

Yeah, came here and came home.

You bet.

It's still not as effective when you got to deal with the bureaucracy like they do here.

I've flown with these guys right here in San Antonio.

There's one.

And so, but from the, you know, the golden hour, if you get a guy within the golden hour, no legs, no arms.

I don't care if you get him within a golden hour into an operating room, he's going to live the average time in my unit, my second tour from the time the guy was shot until we had him in a hospital operating 33 minutes.

Now he's going to live.

98% of those people that we got lived, and we had a lot of amputees, we had a lot of very serious wounded people because there was a lot of mine minefields in our area.

So.

And how on the highways in America, you got to deal with wires, you got to deal with police, you had to deal with firemen.

Communications is everything.

And so it's much more effective, certainly, than a ground ambulance, no question.

But it's still not as quick as we were in Vietnam.

That's saying something.

We don't have time to go into all of your exploits, but I will mention to our audience that you actually did land in a mine field at one point and rescued people, going through you yourself personally, going into that minefield that nobody else was able to get into.

Well, they, that was actually I've been into several minefields, but only one was I on the ground.

And that was kind of scary because this guy is going in front of us and he said, there's a mine.

I couldn't see anything.

And, there's these bouncing things that are mesh.

Yeah.

But this particular day, they were in them.

They were in a minefield.

My my crew were the real heroes because there was a dust off aircraft on the ground, and the mine went off and killed some people around the aircraft.

And so he left, and we just happened to be coming by.

But I saw I saw where he had sat down.

So I knew that if I could hit.

The safe spot.

That was a safe spot.

Yeah.

Then you got to worry about this.

The the rotor setting off of mine.

So I got to the ground safe.

And I said to my crew chief and my medic, I said, go get them.

They jumped out of the helicopter into the minefield and started dragging them to the.

Nobody else would help them.

Nobody else would move.

Everything's going good and I'm watching them up.

Boom!

They set off a mine, blew them up.

Oh my God, I.

Thought they were going to go through the rotor blades.

They land.

They had a big guy on a litter, and I think he took most of the blast because he was almost certainly dead.

Anyhow.

And they got up, loaded them and all the lights were on in the helicopter and I thought, this truck are going to fly.

But it did, and we managed to get him back to the hospital and my crew, too.

We put them in the hospital.

Well, I have to say, if you want to know more about this.

It's all outlines.

Someone took notes and you could read all about it in Dead Men Flying Victory in Vietnam.

I can't tell you how thankful we are that you are still around to tell this story for generations to come.

I promised our viewers that, we would show what heroism look like.

And heroism isn't political or partizan.

It's one of the few things right now all of us can believe in and celebrate.

So thank you so much for your service.

And, Godspeed.

Thank you and your retirement.

And thank you for joining us for the essay files.

I.