Medics flying into warzones on a mission to save lives

The soldier's face was grey with dust, grass poked out of the bandaged stumps where his legs should have been and his skin was charred black where the blast had shredded his forearm.

• Medics from Taskforce Dustoff treat a young Afgan boy for serious burns en route to Kandahar Airfield Pictures: Jerome Starkey

His friends thought he was already dead when the medics swooped in, but Specialist Charles Williams felt a flicker of pulse and hauled him onboard the waiting Blackhawk. Barely 20 minutes after an explosion ripped through a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan, two critically injured soldiers were thundering towards Kandahar Airfield's military hospital.

An Afghan soldier lay unconscious, gurgling blood, next to the American amputee. His lips were missing and his eyes were caked shut with gore.

It was dark. Both men were nearly naked, save for a few scraps of uniform and the bandages and plastic pipes designed to stem the bleeding and keep them breathing.

The dust had turned their black hair grey and in the eerie half light of the medics' blue headlamps, they looked like they were already dead.

These are the "catastrophic" injuries the men and women of Taskforce Dustoff deal with almost every day. With record numbers of Nato troops suffering injury, it is the medics charged with flying into enemy fire to save them who endure the horrors and the hazards of war, far more than ever before.

Dustoff has averaged around 250 missions a month across southern Afghanistan, up to twice as many as their predecessors. At the height of the summer fighting season they flew almost ten rescue missions a day.

In a single day in July, five helicopters flew home with holes from effective enemy fire. In June, the Taliban shot down a US Air Force rescue helicopter, from a different unit, over Sangin, killing all four on board.

The Taliban lay mines where they think helicopters might land and offer bounties to anyone who can shoot them out of the sky.

"You go through three seconds of pure terror every time you come in," said Specialist Williams, 21, a father-of-two, from Idaho, on his first combat tour of duty.

"Then you get out and you've got a job to do."

Fellow medic Sergeant Ian Bugh, 27, added: "You get so used to feeling a certain way, you don't realise it.

"It's when you go home and do something totally different, you feel the level of stress you have been exposed to."

Missions usually start with the electronic chime from a computer connected to headquarters which crews call the "PTSD machine," in a semi-comic nod to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It's followed by the crackle of handheld radios and "Medevac! Medevac! Medevac!" as they sprint towards the helipad.

Different soldiers cope in different ways. "Some guys play video games. Some guys work out. I just go home, watch a movie and go to bed," said Sergeant Octavio "Chad" Orozco, 25, the helicopter crew chief who assisted with the triple amputee.

"I don't care who you are, you are not going to forget what you see."

Two ambulances were waiting when they landed at Kandahar Airfield. Advances in battlefield medicine and the speed patients are transferred from the point of injury to a place of surgery have seen survival rates soar. Unfortunately, this amputee was not so lucky. The Afghan soldier survived but suffered brain damage. He may also lose his sight.

The Dustoff crew flew back to their station, scrubbed the blood out of the helicopter and talked through what might have gone differently. The short answer was not much. They did everything they could.

Their heads were bowed as they walked across the helipad. "That's the worst feeling in the world," Sgt Bugh and Spc Williams agreed. "Helplessness."

"But did you see that navy nurse in the hospital?"

"Dude!"

"She smelled so good."

The jokes started again and they waited for the next call.