Thank you, Sgt. Padgett for your sacrifice

  • Published
  • By Lance Fairchok
  • 505th TRS
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. --  Army Sgt. Timothy Padgett, 28, came home May 14 in a flag-draped casket, his life given like so many before him to the eternal struggle of light against the darkness. 

He was coming home to a small town in the Florida panhandle, a town that remembers him as a volunteer firefighter who had his mom drive him to fires before he got his license in high school. He understood at a young age what citizenship means. He was the youngest of three, and his mother calls him her baby. Her heart is broken, yet she respects his decision to serve, and in that heartrending sadness, she is proud of his bravery, his dedication and his desire to help others. 

Killed in a firefight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Sergeant Padgett was a Special Forces medic. He almost certainly spent more time helping remote villages and their children than he did the wounded in combat. That is what the Green Berets do - that is what Americans do. I knew all this, yet I was utterly unprepared for the sight that greeted me at the Air Force base when Sergeant Padgett's casket passed through on his way home. 

It was a humid spring day. As we came through the terminal of the Hurlburt Field base operations building, we saw before us 1,000 young Americans standing motionless. Dressed in battle dress uniforms identical to each other, their faces were as different as the many lands that sent immigrants to our shores - Korea, Italy, Africa, Germany, Poland, China, Mexico, Russia. Each one was an American to their bones, and brave beyond any reasonable expectation, brave even beyond imagining to those who so wrongly feared we had bred the fight out of our young. I was one, and I am grateful to be proven so profoundly wrong. 

Many standing there were veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as new enlistees and young officers. They stood in silent ranks as the honor guard carried the casket in a solemn cadence past them, each individual salute a personal tribute, so precise, so intent, they utterly shamed me.
 
As the casket was placed into the helicopter that would carry Sergeant Padgett home, I realized that to most Americans this dignity is reserved for presidents and statesmen, yet these young volunteers give it to comrades fallen in battle; a warrior's farewell, as proud and as powerful as anything I have ever seen, and so perfectly American. 

It was appropriate, yet somehow insufficient. There should have been busses here, with teachers and students, construction workers, doctors, lawyers, families with children, immigrants, everyday people, standing silently and respectfully, standing with the bravest of us, standing in tribute to who we are, thankful for all we have, thankful for one brave, honest, eager young man. There should have been many thousands. 

The wash of the rotors buffeted the formation, as they stood motionless, and when the roar of the engines faded into the distance, there was for a moment, silence. A single hawk circled overhead, and the sky was blue. A day that with all its sadness, held hope.
I saw resolve in the young eyes that passed me after the lonely command for dismissal. 

There was no confusion, no muddled morality and no petty politics. They have seen the enemy's vision for our future. They have fought him, and they know the depravity of his ideology. They are ready to do what must be done; they have done it and will willingly do it again. Their strength and clarity of purpose heartened me. 

Our best hope is in those rows of our young who know their duty and embrace it against all odds and all detractions. If only we were all so resolute. 

Thank you, Sergeant Padgett. Thank you for who you were and what you have done and what you so unexpectedly taught me on a sunny day in May. I will try in all things to honor your gift.