This is the story of the military’s “guardian angels”—and the mission of a lifetime. https://t.co/w1JHSIOEAB
— Esquire (@esquire) December 29, 2019
When calamity strikes far from safety, who goes in for the rescue? Who takes care of the elite of the elite, such as the Navy Seals? That would be the PJs, who are trained in all the survival and combat skills of special operations units, plus emergency medical care.
A light by the ramp door turns red, and the airmen ready for departure. They are members of U.S. Air Force Pararescue—parajumpers, PJs for short—elite Special Operations soldiers whose name few know. Their mission entails rescuing personnel caught in ambushes, injured in IED explosion, trapped behind enemy lines. Trained to jump from planes and perform surgery aboard helicopters, they are the airmen who arrive when the Navy SEALS call 9-1-1. The seven PJs aboard the aircraft tonight, members of the 103rd Rescue Squadron, a unit of the New York Air National Guard's 106th Rescue Wing, represent one of the military’s few reserve Special Ops units. Many of these PJs have served together in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Africa. When they are not deployed overseas, these PJs are back home, on call, offering emergency support to the maritime community and the U.S. Coast Guard in particularly challenging missions. Which is what these PJs, based out of Westhampton Beach, Long Island, are doing on this April night, 2017—nineteen hundred miles east of home.
Learn about the PJs as we follow one member through a daring mission to treat gravely injured crewmen from a ship too remote for any other rescue unit, at Esquire. -via Damn Interesting