Groton ― Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jeff Aspinwall, a Groton resident, knew from a young age that he wanted to be a military pilot.

Aspinwall not only did that by becoming a MEDEVAC helicopter pilot in the Connecticut Army National Guard, but he also recently was named Aviator of the Year by the DUSTOFF Association, which supports past, present and future aeromedical evacuation teams.

Aspinwall, whose military service includes flying and testing helicopters and training other aviators and deployments to Syria and Iraq, called the award an honor and said it’s in his nature to want to help others.

He said that while serving overseas, when he got a call on the radio that there was a “category alpha” ― the most severe MEDEVAC category ― his adrenaline would spike, and everybody would run to the helicopter as fast as they could.

Aspinwall said that when the team picked up the patient and got them to the next higher level of care, then heard that they had made it, there was no other feeling like that.

“It’s a very satisfying job,” he said.

Aspinwall, who grew up in Groton and is a 2004 graduate of Robert E. Fitch High School, enlisted in the Connecticut Army National Guard in 2006 and soon after was selected for flight school.

Over his service, Aspinwall, 37, trained and worked his way up to roles that included aviation mission survivabilityofficer, maintenance test pilot, instructor pilot, standardization instructor pilot and pilot in command.

In 2016, Aspinwall said, Connecticut received a three-aircraft MEDEVAC detachment, and the unit was trained to learn about MEDEVAC, also referred to as “DUSTOFF,” which is a call sign overseas, Aspinwall said.

“DUSTOFF stands for Dedicated Unhesitating Service To Our Fighting Forces, and anytime DUSTOFF is called, it’s a bad day for someone, and hopefully we can make it better for them,” Aspinwall said.

Aspinwall’s unit was deployed to Syria in 2018 to provide MEDEVAC coverage and returned home in 2019.

“Our team did a great job,” he said. “We never dropped a mission, and that’s due to the maintainers, the support personnel, the crew chiefs -- they work really hard -- and the flight medics and pilots.”

In 2023, the unit learned it would be deployed again, this time to Iraq, he said. In January of that year, Aspinwall said, his friend and Platoon Sergeant SFC John Harrington died by suicide.

“He was the workhorse of our unit,” said Aspinwall, who remains close to Harrington’s family. “We were always very tight.”

The loss devastated the unit, he said.

On Christmas Day 2023, a drone directly hit a bunker that critically wounded Chief Warrant Officer 4 Garrett Illerbrunn, who was taken to Germany and then returned to the United States to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, according to Aspinwall and news reports.

Aspinwall said he himself received a traumatic brain injury and returned home in January to his wife, Rachel, and children, Norah, 13, William, 10 and Estelle, 7. Aspinwall said he always jokes that the family of five is a basketball team.

“It’s really great to be back together really as a team again and as a family,” he said.

Aspinwall, who continues to serve in the National Guard, is a test pilot at the 1109th Aviation Classification Repair Activity Depot in Groton.

His commanding officer, Capt. Charles M. Staats, wrote in a letter to the DUSTOFF Association that Aspinwall “has committed his career to establishing, resourcing and developing our Soldiers assignment to Detachment 2, Company C, Third Battalion, 126th Aviation Regiment.”

Staats wrote that Aspinwall has been “the backbone of the unit through two combat deployments in the last five years.”

k.drelich@theday.com

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