Dover NCO among those honored at NFL game

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Kevin Wallace
  • 436th AW Public Affairs
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  A Team Dover Airman was recognized during a halftime ceremony at the Washington Redskins game Sunday at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., when Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne ceremoniously pinned on his Purple Heart.

Staff Sgt. Huey Harris III was honored at the game for a Purple Heart he received April 27 for injuries he incurred in an explosion while driving a Humvee in Afghanistan November 2006.

Sergeant Harris, 436th Services Squadron, was driving a convoy mission from Kandahar to Qalat, when a suicide bomber swerved a minibus full of explosives into the driver's side door of his Humvee.

According to Sergeant Harris, an Elkton, Md. native, at that point he remembers bright orange light and smoke. Then, everything went black.

"I woke up, strapped down to a stretcher in a helicopter with medics asking me if I was okay," he said.

Sergeant Harris said the first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to make sure he still had all his body parts and he struggled to look down at his legs.

"I didn't know what was going on until I was in the hospital," said the 30-year-old sergeant. "I thought to myself, 'Am I going to live?'"

Luckily, despite the severity of the explosion, he was fortunate to have survived the suicide bombing. Still, he suffered a head wound, multiple contusions and burns during the attack and spent a month recovering in Germany and had to undergo several surgeries.

"I was dazed for a little while with constant headaches," said Sergeant Harris. "I had insomnia. I felt very sore and had many nightmares."

For Sergeant Harris, the possibility of a road-side bomb was never far from his mind, he said. There was always a possibility his convoy could be attacked.

After deploying to support the Global War on Terror twice and suffering injuries in a roadside attack, he said it's difficult to see incidents like his own aired on the news.

"I had insomnia and many nightmares," he explained.

Still, he said, it's hard to believe that he was among those being honored during the half-time ceremony Sunday.

Now, the sergeant has a new way of looking at his life.

"It helped me realize how good I have it here, and how I took a lot of things for granted, such as my own life," said Sergeant Harris. "Being in that kind of environment has changed my whole outlook on the Air Force."

(Some information provided by Airman Shen-Chia Chu)