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Injured airman knew they needed him

Sep- 2-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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By TATABOLINE BRANT, Anchorage Daily News

Melissa Helmick was steam cleaning the carpets at her home on Elmendorf Air Force Base over the weekend, getting ready for out-of-town relatives, when she got the call: Something had happened to her husband in Iraq.

Helmick, 28, wasn't told in that conversation what that something was. She was only told that several military officials, including Col. Mark Douglas, commander of one of the four main units that make up Elmendorf's 3rd Wing, were on their way over to talk to her about the man she'd been married to for nine years and known since she was 16.

"It was 3:18 in the afternoon on Sunday," Helmick recalled in a short but emotional interview Wednesday at an office on base. "I thought the worst."

At her home, Douglas immediately let Helmick know that her husband, Staff Sgt. Michael Helmick, 28, had not been killed but was seriously injured and in surgery after being airlifted to Germany.

According to officials, Michael was riding in a truck near Mosul on Sunday with two other Elmendorf airmen when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle. The truck was the first in a convoy along a planned route, said Col. Michael Snodgrass, commander of the 3rd Wing, who was also present at the interview Wednesday.

Melissa said her husband was a gunner on a U.S. Army convoy. Gunners often stand or sit on the outside of the vehicle, but exactly where Michael was positioned when the bomb went off near his five-ton truck was not available.

Airman 1st Class Carl L. Anderson, 21, from Georgetown, S.C., the driver of the truck, was killed in the explosion. Airman 1st Class Jacob Sutton suffered minor injuries and later returned to work.

Michael, from Morgantown, W. Va., suffered a fractured arm, shrapnel wounds on all of his limbs and an abrasion to his eye, officials said Tuesday.


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