Dust Off/Air-Evac lyrics

With mortal wounds he reached up

Grasping with all strength

To hold on to mortality

In my sticky, blood-soaked arms

As if I were the last anchor

On the voyage into uncertainty

Fear, a streak across his face

The lustre fading in the din

The shaking, shimmering chopper

That felt each time loaded lifting

And landing that it would fall apart

The frame of a mobile home

I sat upon my helmet for protection

A flack vest to retain my innards

Blown out within by high speed projectiles

It would seem a grim contest

As to whom would win the race

The painful ploy to end it all

To steal their lives away before me

Ground fire on Air-Evac forbidden

Lost to men who are lost themselves

Bullets ripping through the deck

Claiming those who escaped the battle

Lives stolen from my hoping hands

Suffering silenced in an instant

Names seen but unremembered then

But they fly back to me now

Lives in sinister soliloquies

Numbed by the noise of war

Flashes of hell's fury

Those that survive by fate's chance

In their dedicated moments of care

No more a committed comrade there

Transported to hospital to prolong

The bird in silence, blood trickles

Down the skid frame and the deck pools

A sickening feeling deep in our guts

We will have to go back out again