"I did what I did 'cause if I didn't do it, it wouldn't have gotten done, and might I add that not doing it at all would have been a lot worse than doing it badly, which I was not about to do."

-- Capt. H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock, "The A-Team"

CHRISTIANSBURG -- They call them the "Gray Team," these four men with weathered faces and silver halos.

"They're good," said Geoff King, an emergency medical technician trainee with the Christiansburg Rescue Squad. "They're ugly, though."

Amir Hamad seconded that.

"They're like the four grumpy old men."

Then the 19-year-old Hamad grinned as he looked down the line of fiercely frowning father figures: Kelly Walters, 70; Ralph Reed, 75; Eddie Trump, 52; and Wilson "Speedy" Carroll, 69.

"Nah," Hamad said with a shrug. "They're good."

Hamad, a Virginia Tech student who served on his home rescue squad in the Richmond area, sought out the Christiansburg Rescue Squad when he came to Blacksburg. Blacksburg, he said, didn't have what he wanted.

"I'd rather come to Christiansburg and run with people up there in age, rather than with college students. ... Speedy and Ralph have to straighten me out once in a while."

Indeed, these senior active members of the Christiansburg squad have straightened out more than a few young pups in their decades of volunteer service.

Together, they've put in 150 years.

That's ... how many hours?

"I wouldn't venture to guess," Reed said.

"Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds," said Trump.

"Missed a lot of meals," Walters groused.

Tough going

Imagine a century and a half of running, lifting, bandaging, birthing, speeding, cleaning, resuscitating, mentoring, mending and ministering.

That's the Gray Team's story.

They've also sold a few hot dogs, dished out some spaghetti and emptied their own pockets.

"We didn't have any money," Walters said of his early days on the squad.

Now captain of the unit and the only paid member, Walters still remembers when rescuers bought their own Band-Aids.

"It was pass-the-hat at meetings," the gruff-speaking, big-hearted Walters said. "We'd meet sometimes at 11 o'clock at night fussing over a phone bill, how we were going to pay it. It was tough go."

"We bought ambulances with fundraisers," added Carroll, who remembers "bucket drives" when squad members stood in traffic, passing buckets to motorists for donations.

Reed, who joined the squad in 1970, recalls his first years when squad members were on call a week at a time every month. He remembers, too, the long hours and missed holidays.

"It's rough," he said. "You go out and spend all night on the road and then come in to work at 7:30."

Then, there are the hazards most people don't hear about.

Such as the wreck many years ago when a man plowed his car into a creek in the Alleghany Spring area of Montgomery County. Rescuers had to wade out to help the man, who was pinned in his auto.

"He had gotten into a hornet's nest," Reed said. "We all got a few stings."

These days, the Gray Team doesn't have to run the night calls. They're all life members of the rescue squad, and the squad has grown to the point where crews take turns bunking at the crew hall to provide late-night service. Emergency service in Christiansburg, which has the largest coverage area of any squad in the New River Valley, is covered by 35 volunteers, although the roster calls for 50.

During the day, the quarrelsome quartet provides an invaluable aid.

They're usually the first to respond when someone dials 911.

Hard stories

Oct. 18. The sun beamed down on a muddy construction site at New River Valley Mall where moments earlier a young steel worker had slipped while laying decking. The man -- 21-year-old Saul Lemus -- had fallen 25 feet.

The Gray Team responded, along with members of the Christiansburg Fire Department.

Inside the ambulance, a gurney covered with starched clean sheets waited. Overhead, an IV bag full of fluid waited, too.

Trump and Reed wheeled the gurney to the site of the accident and carefully loaded Lemus -- his head and neck already stabilized -- onto the sheets. The injured worker, still conscious, held his arms over his eyes to shield them from the glaring sun.

The doors to the ambulance slammed shut and within seconds, he was on his way to Montgomery Regional Hospital for treatment.

Miraculously, Lemus suffered only bruises.

It could have been worse. Much worse. The Gray Team has seen worse.

Car wrecks, suicides, homicides, plane crashes, drownings, poisonings.

"We can tell you some real hard stories but you don't want to hear them," Reed said.

But injured or sick or dying children, all the men agree, are the hardest.

The same men who passed the bucket to support the squad financially remember the days when they lacked support emotionally.

"In the old days, we didn't have group therapy," Trump acknowledged. "We'd come back to the crew hall, thrash it out and go home.

"You have to want to give back to the community," he added, pointing to his reason for his longevity with the rescue squad. "I had a girl run up and hug my neck the other day. She said, 'You got me out of a car wreck.' "

Walters said the volunteers on his squad do their jobs for rewards that transcend monetary compensation.

"The reward," he said, "is just knowing that you've helped somebody. You hope."

Taxi service

For the Gray Team and other Christiansburg Rescue Squad members who answer an average of 275 calls a month, drama is not the norm.

In the old days, Walters said, he answered more true emergency calls.

"When I first got in the rescue squad, 15 calls was a big month," he said. "Now, we do a lot of taxi service."

Oct. 23. A cold wind blew as Walters and Reed headed to a Wheatland Court patio home to pick up a patient having difficulty breathing.

When the two arrived, the patient was on his feet. He explained that he was released recently from the hospital after a bout of pneumonia.

Walters began filling out a questionnaire, asking the man's name, medical history and age.

"Seventy-four?" Walters chirped. "You ain't as old as that old man with me."

In the ambulance, Reed and Walters took the man's vital signs and radioed the hospital.

"I have a water jug that I'd like to take with me," the man told Reed. "Would you run in there and get it?"

Reed's feathers weren't ruffled. "They'll have water there," he said.

The ambulance -- minus lights and sirens -- carried the patient three miles to Montgomery Regional Hospital. His wife followed behind in her car. That, Walters noted, is the typical call.

"Probably 90 percent of the calls today are non-emergency," Trump explained. "I'd say 10 percent of our calls are real emergencies. We still respond to every call that comes in."

Christiansburg, like Blacksburg, continues to rely on volunteer power to run the rescue squads. Patients do not have to pay a fee for transport.

"We've been trying to avoid having to put paid providers in," noted Blacksburg Rescue Squad chief Sid Bingley. "It's all still free."

Other rescue squads have had to buoy volunteer staff with paid workers.

In Floyd County, where there are three stations in operation and one under construction, the rescue squad added six full-time paid positions and one flex-time paid employee to help volunteers on weekends.

"That was at the request of volunteers," said Acting Floyd County Administrator Terri Morris. "So many volunteers were working and couldn't get to the calls during the day. Over half of our work force works outside the county."

Two years ago, Morris added, the county started billing for the rescue service.

1996 was the year Pulaski County incorporated its rescue squads after Regional Emergency Medical Services was created.

"We have about 70 volunteers left and about 30 paid staff," said Shawn Hite, deputy director of the corporation. "It was mostly related to response time and availability. With full-time jobs and certification requirements, it's definitely harder for people to volunteer."

His is also a fee-for-service operation, primarily covered by patients' insurance.

Gray -- and great

"These guys are my heroes," Susan Bricken says of the Gray Team.

"These guys are serving the community in a way no others serve the community -- even with gray hair, arthritic limbs and grumpiness."

Bricken, 63, joined the Christiansburg squad after moving from Northern Virginia a year ago. She said she was welcomed with open arms.

"I don't think I've ever been on a call that they didn't know the people they were picking up. I think everybody in town knows these guys."

Members of the Gray Team -- all native Christiansburgers -- are known for directing rescuers to houses where there are no house numbers and providing patient information that's not found in medical records.

They know family histories, family ties and, sometimes, family secrets.

Bricken remembers a routine call to assist an elderly woman who suddenly started shaking violently as the rescuers approached her.

"It scared me to death," she admitted. "But Kelly said firmly, 'Sarah, stop that. Stop that now.' And she did."

Apparently, the woman had feigned convulsions many times to get attention.

But she couldn't fool an old fool.

For many of the younger, more vigorous squad members, it's the old fools who keep them coming back.

"The most fun I've ever had was with Ralph and Kelly," said Kim Harris, a 24-year-old EMT who describes her recollection of running with the Gray Team.

It's the grumbling, she said, that makes it fun.

"Speed up, Ralph. Slow down, Ralph. Good God! Who taught you to drive?"