“From the first launch of airplanes in combat, the idea of rescuing downed airmen flew with ‘the knights of the air.’ The first rescue of an airman by a fellow airman . . . in 1916, heralded that they could do it: retrieve unhorsed knights and set them astride fresh mounts to fight again.”

In the brotherhood of the sky, pilots have always been willing to risk their lives to rescue comrades. This exhaustive study of a near-century of Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) missions makes clear that this nobility had a cost.

Written by two former Navy CSAR pilots, this labor-of-love contains more tales of stunning heroism than any other volume I’ve encountered. Beginning with the dashing “mission impossible” exploits of Brit and Aussie pilots in the Middle East during the Great War – soon to be followed by US aviators flying rescue missions on the Western Front – “Leave No Man Behind” marches through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Somalia and our other conflicts up to our current wars.

Hundreds of rescue missions fill this book, but one that particularly struck me resulted in a personal decision by FDR that Lieutenant J.G. Nathan Gordon deserved the Medal of Honor, with silver stars awarded to every other crew member on his Catalina flying boat. Supporting a 1944 bombing mission in the Pacific, Gordon made four back-to-back rescues during a single flight, all under intense Japanese fire and with rough seas tearing leaks in the hull of his defenseless “Black Cat.” As his fighter escort’s planes ran out of fuel and turned homeward, Gordon went back into the kill zone again and again, purposely stalling his engines to land between shell bursts and eventually cramming fifteen wounded airmen into his waterlogged aircraft before barely making it back to a friendly ship.

Few of us could imagine taking the risks our Navy and Air Force pilots took to save their brethren. And the costs were high: by one accounting, during our involvement in Southeast Asia, the Navy and Air Force between them conducted at least 211 rescues under fire (this doesn’t count the many non-combat rescue missions). The price was 102 rescue birds shot down, with 94 CSAR crewmen killed in action or taken prisoner. And the scale of rescue missions was far greater in World War II.

Yet, if the heroism was dependable, support for the CSAR mission was not. A heartbreaking pattern appeared after World War I and plagued the CSAR effort right through Desert Storm: “The arguments against sustaining a strong combat rescue capability at war’s end were couched in different rationales at different times, but money was never far from the heart of the reasoning.” When the shooting stopped, the men in green eyeshades and the “shooters” allied to phase out CSAR units – or, at best, dumped them in the reserves.

One startling result was the largely untold incompetence of CSAR efforts during Desert Storm. The culminating tale of the botched rescue effort for call-sign Corvette 03 will infuriate any taxpayer aware of the size of defense budgets: We bought the arms that industry wanted to sell, but forgot our duty to the men wielding those weapons. For all the technological advances, we did a better job in the Pacific in World War II than during the first Gulf War.

We’ve learned, though. Today “the United States finally has the competent and sufficient CSAR forces in place that CSAR professionals have fought for . . . [yet] perversely, the wars have changed. Combat rescue events are becoming fewer and fewer, down to a trickle.”

Well, be patient. The age of big wars isn’t over. We’ll always need brave aviators in vulnerable machines to ride to the rescue of downed comrades.

Ralph Peters is the author of “Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.”

Leave No Man Behind

The Saga of Combat Search and Rescue

by George Galdorisi and Thomas Phillips

Zenith Press