‘Moments of sheer terror’

Soap Lake veteran, comrades, awarded Congressional Gold Medal

SOAP LAKE — War is hell, it’s often said, and soldiers who get hurt or killed in action are rightly honored for their courage and sacrifice. But recently the U.S. Congress honored another group whose courage sometimes goes unnoticed. Operation Dustoff, the collective name for the medical teams who evacuated the wounded from the battlefields of Vietnam in helicopters, was honored in September with the Congressional Gold Medal. One of those men was Glenn Knight, who now lives in the Lakewood area of Soap Lake. “A Dustoff crew was made up of two pilots, a crew chief and a medic,” Knight said. “I was a medic.”