Charles L. Kelly

In 2002, the documentary film crew of In the Shadow of the Blade honored Kelly's story at their landing zone near Columbus, Georgia. After hearing the story of his father's courage from Vietnam Dustoff colleague Ernest Sylvester, Charles Kelly Jr. flew in the left seat of the documentary's restored UH-1 Iroquois, emulating his father's wartime experience.

One of the earliest arriving Army Medical Department units in theater, the 57th was also the longest serving, leaving theater on 9 March 1973, less than three weeks before the final exit of US troops, for its new home at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where it would remain until it was inactivated in the mid-2000s. Its service qualified it for 17 of the 18 campaigns of the Vietnam Service Medal, and the detachment was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, five Meritorious Unit Citations, and the Gallantry Cross with Palm.

"Kelly became a legend, revered for his aggressive leadership and fearlessness in evacuating casualties. Ironically, his loss ensured that the Army's aeromedical operations would use his mold, one characterized by unarmed single ships operated without escort aircraft by aviators who, like Kelly, were experienced in night flying. In fact, the flying skills of Dustoff crews were such that some general aviation pilots believed there was a special school to teach their flying techniques. Kelly was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and in 1967 General Heaton dedicated the Kelly Heliport at Fort Sam Houston, Texas."

Kelly logged his first flight hours in Vietnam on 6 January 1964 and assumed command of the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) at Tan Son Nhut Air Base on 11 January 1964.

Early in 1964 the growing burden of aeromedical evacuation fell on the 57th's third group of new pilots, crews, and maintenance personnel. The helicopters were still the 1963 UH-1B models, but most of the new pilots were fresh from flight school. Kelly was described as "a gruff, stubborn, dedicated soldier who let few obstacles prevent him from finishing a task." Within six months he set an example of courage and hard work that Dustoff pilots emulated for the rest of the war, and into the 21st Century.

Kelly quickly took advantage of the 57th's belated move to the fighting in the south. On 1 March 1964 the U.S. Army Support Group, Vietnam ordered the aircraft at Pleiku and Qui Nhon to move to the Delta. Two helicopters and five pilots, now called Detachment A, 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance), Provisional, flew to the U.S. base at Soc Trang. Once a fighter base for both the French and the Japanese, Soc Trang was a compound roughly 1,000 by 3,000 feet, surrounded by rice paddies.

Unit statistics soon proved the wisdom of the move south: the number of Vietnamese evacuees climbed from 193 in February to 416 in March. Detachment A continued its coverage of combat in the Delta until October 1964, when the 82nd Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) from the States took over that area. Major Kelly, who had taken command of the 57th on 11 January, moved south with Detachment A, preferring the field and flying to ground duty in Saigon.

Kelly and his teams also benefited from two years of growing American involvement in Vietnam. By the spring of 1964 the United States had 16,000 military personnel in South Vietnam (3,700 officers and 12,300 enlisted men). The Army, which accounted for 10,100 of these, had increased its aircraft in South Vietnam from 40 in December 1961 to 370 in December 1963. For the first time since its arrival two years ago the 57th was receiving enough Dustoff requests to keep all its pilots busy.

The new team continued and even stepped-up night operations. In April 1964, the detachment flew 110 hours at night while evacuating ninety-nine patients. To aid their night missions in the Delta the pilots made a few special plotting flights, during which they sketched charts of the possible landing zones, outlined any readily identifiable terrain features, and noted whether radio navigational aid could be received. During one such flight Major Kelly and his copilot heard on their radio that a VNAF T-28, a fixed-wing plane, had gone down. After joining the search, Kelly soon located the plane. While he and his crew circled the area trying to decide how to approach the landing zone, the Viet Cong below opened fire on the helicopter. One round passed up through the open cargo door and slammed into the ceiling. Unfazed, Kelly shot a landing to the T-28, taking fire from all sides. Once down, he, his crew chief, and his medic jumped out and sprayed submachine gun fire at the Viet Cong while helping the VNAF pilot destroy his radios and pull the M60 machine guns from his plane. Kelly left the area without further damage and returned the VNAF pilot to his unit. Kelly and his Dustoff crew flew more than 500 miles that day.

Apart from the Viet Cong, the 57th's greatest problem at that time was a lack of pilots. After Kelly reached Vietnam he succeeded in having the other nine Medical Service Corps pilots who followed him assigned to the 57th. He needed more, but the Surgeon General's Aviation Branch seemed to have little understanding of the rigors of Dustoff flying. In the spring of 1964 the Aviation Branch tried to have new Medical Service Corps pilots assigned to nonmedical helicopter units in Vietnam, assuming that they would benefit more from combat training than from Dustoff flying.

Kelly was killed in action on July 1, 1964, when, after being warned out of a "hot" landing zone, he replied, "When I have your wounded." A bullet entered through an open cargo door and pierced his heart. Major Kelly became the 149th American to die in Vietnam.

Kelly was returned to Sylvania on 14 July 1964 and was interred at the Screven County Memorial Cemetery, Sylvania, Georgia on 15 July 1964 following a memorial service at the Sylvania First Baptist Church. The Army provided an honor guard, a military escort, and a chaplain, and "full military honors" were provided at the graveside. Flags in the city were flown at half staff on the 14th and the 15th, draped with a black mourning stripe until after the completion of the funeral. All city offices in Sylvania were closed on the 14th and 15th, although no official proclamation of mourning was issued. As Sylvania's mayor, Ed Overstreet said, "We made no proclamation of mourning. We in Sylvania all knew Major Kelly personally and we want only to enter his funeral personally. We will let the military handle the official part."

Several young war correspondents for major American wire services, news magazines, and newspapers had been prowling the Delta in 1964 looking for stories. One of them, future Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Peter Arnett had made friends with Kelly and his crews in Soc Trang, figuring that Dustoff would make a good story for his employer, the Associated Press. Instead, he ended up writing what became, in essence, Kelly's obituary, which was carried nationally on the day Kelly was buried, many with a photo of Kelly at the controls of has Dustoff aircraft. Another, unnamed author wrote a story for Time magazine which ran nationally on 10 July.

Temperelli was replaced on 26 February 1963 by Major Lloyd E. Spencer. It was Spencer who would select the callsign "Dustoff" for the 57th.

Although the number of Vietnamese casualties rose in 1963, the South Vietnamese military refused to set up its own aeromedical evacuation unit. The VNAF response to requests for medical evacuation depended on aircraft availability, the security of the landing zone, and the mood and temperament of the VNAF pilots. If the South Vietnamese had no on-duty or standby aircraft ready to fly a medical evacuation mission, they passed the request on to the 57th. Even when they accepted the mission themselves, their response usually suffered from a lack of leadership and poor organization. Since South Vietnamese air mission commanders rarely flew with their flights, the persons responsible for deciding whether to abort a mission often lacked the requisite experience. As a MACV summary said: "Usually the decision was made to abort, and the air mission commander could do nothing about it. When an aggressive pilot was in the lead ship, the aircraft came through despite the firing. American advisers reported that on two occasions only the first one or two helicopters landed; the rest hovered out of reach of the wounded who needed to get aboard."

An example of the poor quality of VNAF medical evacuation occurred in late October 1963, when the ARVN 2d Battalion, 14th Regiment, conducted Operation LONG HUU II near O Lac in the Delta. At dawn the battalion began its advance. Shortly after they moved out, the Viet Cong ambushed them, opening fire from three sides with automatic weapons and 81 -mm. mortars. At 0700 casualty reports started coming into the battalion command post. The battalion commander sent his first casualty report to the regimental headquarters at 0800: one ARVN soldier dead and twelve wounded, with more casualties in the paddies. He then requested medical evacuation helicopters. By 0845 the casualty count had risen to seventeen lightly wounded, fourteen seriously wounded, and four dead. He sent out another urgent call for helicopters. The battalion executive officer and the American adviser prepared two landing zones, one marked by green smoke for the seriously wounded and a second by yellow smoke for the less seriously wounded. Not until 1215 did three VNAF H-34's arrive over O Lac to carry out the wounded and dead. During the delay the ARVN battalion stayed in place to protect their casualties rather than pursue the retreating enemy. The American adviser wrote later: "It is common that, when casualties are sustained, the advance halts while awaiting evacuation. Either the reaction time for helicopter evacuation must be improved, or some plan must be made for troops in the battalion rear to provide security for the evacuation and care of casualties."

With more and more fighting occurring in the Delta and around Saigon, the 57th could not always honor every evacuation request. U.S. Army helicopter assault companies were forced to keep some of their aircraft on evacuation standby, but without a medical corpsman or medical equipment. Because of the shortage of Army aviators and the priority of armed combat support, the Medical Service Corps did not have enough pilots to staff another Dustoff unit in Vietnam. Most Army aeromedical evacuation units elsewhere already worked with less than their permitted number of pilots. Although Army aviation in Vietnam had grown considerably since 1961, by the summer of 1964 its resources fell short of what it needed to perform its missions, especially medical evacuation.

The table below lists Kelly's assignments with details where available. His service as commander of the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) in South Vietnam is covered in greater detail in subsequent sections.

Kelly is often erroneously credited with being the first commander of the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) in South Vietnam, or of selecting the callsign "Dustoff" for the 57th. Neither is true.

Although unit callsigns at the time were rotated periodically to preserve operations security, it was determined that having a fixed callsign for medical evacuation—and a fixed frequency—would be more advantageous for medical evacuation operations, and so the 57th's callsign was not changed as it normally would have been at the end of the period for the Signal Operations Instructions.

Detachment A in Soc Trang lived in crude "Southeast Asia" huts with sandbags and bunkers for protection against enemy mortar and ground attack. The rest of the 57th in Saigon struggled along with air conditioning, private baths, a mess hall, and a bar in their living quarters. In spite of the contrast, most pilots preferred Soc Trang. It was there that Major Kelly and his pilots forged the Dustoff tradition of valorous and dedicated service.

Kelly faced one big problem when he arrived: the helicopters that the 57th had received the year before were showing signs of age and use, and Brigadier General Joseph Stilwell Jr., the Support Group commander, could find no new aircraft for the detachment. Average flight time on the old UH-1Bs was 800 hours. But this did not deter the new pilots from each flying more than 100 hours a month in medical evacuations. Some of them stopped logging their flight time at 140 hours, so that the flight surgeon would not ground them for exceeding the monthly ceiling.

By the time the helicopter had finished its mission and returned to Tan Son Nhut, most of the 57th were waiting. News of an American death traveled quickly in those early days of the war. Later, reflecting on the incident, Kelly praised his pilots for bringing the bodies back even though the 57th's mission statement said nothing about moving the dead. But he voiced renewed doubts about the ferrying of ammunition.

Brady later explained what actually happened behind the scenes. Upon landing, Brady was met by Kelly and called aside. Expecting to be sternly counseled, Brady was surprised when Kelly simply asked why he had carried in ammunition and carried out the dead. Brady replied that the ammunition was "preventive medicine" and that the dead "were angels", and he couldn't refuse them. Kelly simply walked back to the group involved in that day's missions and told them that it was the type of mission he wanted the 57th to be flying. Brady realized the significance of Kelly's statement, as Kelly would be responsible for any fallout from Brady's actions.

In fact, the Dustoff mission was again under attack. When Support Command began to pressure the 57th to place removable red crosses on the aircraft and begin accepting general purpose missions, Kelly stepped up unit operations. Knowing that removable red crosses had already been placed on transport and assault helicopters in the north, Kelly told his men that the 57th must prove its worth-and by implication the value of dedicated medical helicopters-beyond any shadow of doubt.

While before the 57th had flown missions only in response to a request, it now began to seek missions. Kelly himself flew almost every night. As dusk came, he and his crew would depart Soc Trang and head southwest for the marshes and Bac Lieu, home of a team from the 73d Aviation Company and detachments from two signal units, then further south to Ca Mau, an old haunt of the Viet Minh, whom the French had never been able to dislodge from its forested swamps. Next, they would fly south almost to the tip of Ca Mau Peninsula, then at Nam Can reverse their course toward the Seven Canals area. After a check for casualties there at Vi Thanh, they turned northwest up to Rach Gia on the Gulf of Siam, then on to the Seven Mountains region on the Cambodian border. From there they came back to Can Tho, the home of fourteen small American units, then up to Vinh Long on the Mekong River, home of the 114th Aviation Company (Airmobile Light). Finally, they flew due east to Truc Giang, south to the few American advisers at Phu Vinh, then home to Soc Trang. The entire circuit was 720 kilometers.

Kelly had begun to realize that, although he preferred flying and being in the field to Saigon, he could better influence things by returning to Tan Son Nhut. After repeated requests from Brady, Kelly told him that he would relinquish command of Detachment A of the 57th at Soc Trang to Brady on 1 July and return to Saigon—although he then later told Brady he was extending his stay in the Delta for at least another month.

The 57th Medical Detachment was activated at Fort Sam Houston on 6 April 1953. The detachment departed Fort Sam Houston on a permanent Change of station move on 5 November 1957, arriving at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland on 20 November 1957. The detachment, under the command of Captain John P. Temperilli Jr., MSC, was alerted for overseas movement on 15 February 1962 and departed the Continental United States aboard the USS Croatan on 8 March 1962 and arrived in South Vietnam on 26 April 1962, bringing with it the first five UH-1s to deploy to Vietnam. Upon arrival the detachment, among the very first units of the Army Medical Department to arrive in Vietnam, was placed under the command and control of the 8th Field Hospital, whose commander was also assigned the role of Surgeon, United States Army Support Command, Vietnam.

After obtaining his master's degree, Kelly taught for a short time in Warm Springs, Georgia, before applying for a commission in the Army. He accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve on 25 October 1951 and was ordered to active duty—the customary career path for a Medical Service Corps Officer at the time. He accepted a Regular Army commission in the Medical Service Corps on 16 June 1954.

Following his graduation from high school, Kelly enrolled in the Georgia Teachers College in Statesboro, Georgia, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 1950. He then followed that by obtaining a Master of Arts in geology from the George Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee.

After his discharge from the Army, Kelly returned to Sylvania, Georgia. He completed his education at the Sylvania High School, participating in the senior play and graduating in 1947 as the class President. He was also active in the Sylvania Junior Chamber of Commerce, where he served as Secretary-Treasurer, and in the George Alexander Post of the American Legion. It was also during this time that he courted, and married, Jessie Hillis of Sylvania. They had a son, Charles Kelly Jr., and two daughters, Carol and Barbara.

If any of the stops had patients to be evacuated, Kelly's crew loaded them on the aircraft and continued on course, unless a patient's condition warranted returning immediately to Soc Trang. After delivering the patients, they would sometimes resume the circuit. Many nights they carried ten to fifteen patients who otherwise would have had to wait until daylight to receive the care they needed. In March, this flying from outpost to outpost, known as "scarfing", resulted in seventy-four hours of night flying that evacuated nearly one-fourth of that month's 448 evacuees. The stratagem worked; General Stilwell dropped the idea of having the 57th use removable red crosses.

His wife, Jessie Hillis Kelly Morris (1929–2003) and his mother, Ruth Amelia Moore Kelly (1900–1973), were later buried nearby.

Major Charles Livingston Kelly (10 April 1925 – 1 July 1964) was a United States Army helicopter pilot and medical evacuation unit commander during the Vietnam War. Because of the central role he played in the development of early battlefield evacuation techniques during the war—and the central role his death on the battlefield played in cementing those techniques in Army doctrine at a time they were being questioned by line commanders—he earned the sobriquet "The Father of Dustoff".

Charles Livingston Kelly was born on 10 April 1925 in Wadley, Georgia, the eldest of three sons born to Charlton L. Kelly and Ruth Amelia Moore Kelly. His father died when he was six years old, and his mother never remarried. He was raised in Sylvania, Georgia.

Kelly dropped out of high school and lied about his age in order to enlist in the Army at the age of 15. He used a birth date of 22 December 1922 and enlisted under the name "Charles L. Kelley". He reported for active duty at Fort Screven, Georgia, on 25 February 1941 for 1 year of service as an army medic. As enlistment contracts at that time included an "or duration plus six months" clause, Kelly left the service as a corporal on 3 August 1945. He served overseas with the 30th Infantry Division and, although he was listed as a medic as late as May 1944, he was serving as an infantryman when he was wounded by an artillery shell fragment during the battle for Aachen, Germany. Kelly's injury was a severe one, a compound fracture of the fibula which kept him hospitalized for treatment and recovery from the time he was wounded in October 1944 until June 1945. Patrick Henry Brady, who served under Kelly in South Vietnam, said that Kelly's experience as a wounded infantryman was what would later drive him as a medical evacuation pilot.

"As for combat experience, the pilots in this unit are getting as much or more combat-support flying experience than any unit over here. You must understand that everybody wants to get into the Aeromedical Evacuation business. To send pilots to U.T.T. [the Utility Tactical Transport Helicopter Company, a nonmedical unit] or anywhere else is playing right into their hands. I fully realize that I do not know much about the big program, but our job is evacuation of casualties from the battlefield. This we are doing day and night, without escort aircraft, and with only one ship for each mission. Since I have been here we have evacuated 1800 casualties and in the last three months we have flown 242.7 hours at night. No other unit can match this. The other [nonmedical] units fly in groups, rarely at night, and always heavily armed."