Mail it, he said.
No, the Army said. We’re coming out.
So last weekend, the 82nd Airborne Division sent a colonel and
his entourage from Fort Bragg, N.C., to find Matt Blain.
And give him something rare. “In my 27 years in uniform service,
this is the first time I’ve seen this presentation,” 4th Brigade
Combat Team Col. Brian Mennes says. “That’s how significant it
is.”
With that, the 82nd Airborne colonel explains his visit to a
houseful of Blain’s family and friends.
“It was almost like a movie,” Mennes says, describing Blain’s
actions on Feb. 28, 2010, in the
Guzara District of
Afghanistan.
A 30,000-pound Army vehicle flipped into a river swollen with
rain. One man was thrown out the gun turret. Three were trapped
inside as water filled the cabin.
By the time Staff Sgt. Blain arrived, running full-tilt, other
soldiers were scrambling down the embankment to try to help.
Not Blain. He leapt off the river bank, toward the black
torrent.
Mid-air he began to wonder if that was such a good idea.
Purple Heart
Jumping into danger runs in the Blain family.
Blain’s grandfather George Blain jumped into France the night
before D-Day with the 101st Airborne “Pathfinders.” He earned four
Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart.
“I wanted to be like him,” says Blain, a fearless child who once
skateboarded home 2 miles with a broken ankle.
Like his grandfather, Blain eventually became a paratrooper. And
like his grandfather, Blain earned a Purple Heart.
On Nov. 2, 2007, he stepped on a landmine in Eastern Province of
Ghazni, Afghanistan. He didn’t weigh enough to trigger the
explosive. But the Humvee behind him did.
“The Humvee blew up,” says Blain, 25 and now a husband, dad and
student at
Azusa Pacific University. “I got thrown. I was
dazed, then I came to and ran to the truck.”
He pulled open the door and helped the injured men out.
He’s learned a lot in his two deployments to Afghanistan. He
witnessed abject poverty, with people living in mud huts. And he
witnessed the fragility of life, with buddies dying from Improvised
Explosive Devices, or IEDs.
“The stress level is there,” he says about patrols. “You have to
turn off your emotions when you’re out there.”