SERVING ‘at the tip of the spear’
Decorated Army Ranger refuses to rest on his laurels
Iwas doing my annual emailing and calling around last week, hoping to track down a good Veterans Day story to run this weekend when I came across the website of the New Mexico chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
I sent an email and heard back nearly instantly. As I wrote my reply, the phone rang.
I explained to Andrew Bennett, the chapter’s commander, what I was looking for: a good war story or a heartwarming homecoming tale, perhaps.
So Bennett responded, “Well,
I can do it.”
After spending a couple of hours with the 31-year-old Army veteran later in the week, I found that the same willingness to stand up and volunteer is a significant part of how Bennett lives his life.
Bennett served with the
prestigious Army Rangers.
Seeing him in person, it’s not hard to believe. He’s tall with an athletic build; his T-shirt sleeves seem to strain over his biceps.
He’s a young man sporting
dirty blond and closely cropped hair and boyish good looks.
Born and raised in Southern California, Bennett said he was deeply impacted by the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
“I joined wanting to go make a difference,” he said. “The most direct way I figured was at the tip of the spear, if you will.”
He joined the Army in 2008 after moving to Albuquerque for construction work. He then went through Ranger training — some of the military’s most brutal — at Fort Benning, Ga.
Let him set the scene: Running and crawling in mud and ice through the night, then finally being sent to bed. Someone is caught eating a snack, and it’s back outside. Now both sets of your clothes are wet, and it’s cold.
To keep you warm, they keep you running.
“It would get to the point where you just started laughing,” he said. “Because like, it literally could not get any worse than this. And then it starts to snow or sleet and you’re like, ‘I was wrong.’ ”
By the time he was finished, he had a sprained ankle on one foot and a broken toe on the other.
If that’s not enough to get your respect, there’s a heck of a lot more to Bennett’s story.
He deployed to Afghanistan four times from 2009 to 2012.
He estimates that he participated in at least 250 missions, which
mostly consisted of riding a helicopter out to a target in the middle of the night in a process Bennett describes succinctly: “Load up on a helicopter, fly in, wake them up or fight them, take them with us or take pictures, then leave.”
On Aug. 6, 2011, Bennett was on a mission in the Tangi Valley when they heard over the radio that a Chinook had been downed in a nearby village.
His platoon booked it the 7 1 ⁄2 kilometers to the wreckage of Extortion 17 that had carried 30 Americans, eight Afghans and one American military working dog.
All were killed when the aircraft was struck by an insurgent’s rocket-propelled grenade. It was the single greatest loss of American life in the war in Afghanistan.
When asked to describe such a tragic scene, he was hesitant and reserved.
“That’s not my place,” he said. “That’s a lot of families that lost people, so for me to describe that is not really fair. I go into detail, and it tears someone’s heart out.”
As Bennett was pulling the men’s bodies from the crash, an explosion knocked him unconscious and lodged shrapnel in his back, earning him his Purple Heart.
Still, Bennett considers that experience one of the most impactful of his time in the military, calling it a “privilege.”
“And I say privilege, because I’ve done a lot in my military career, but there’s very little that I’m more proud of than actually living the
Ranger Creed: ‘I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.’ ”
By the time he separated from the Army in 2016, Bennett had received not only a Purple Heart, but also a U.S. Army Presidential Unit Citation, Expert Infantryman Badge, Joint Service Commendation Medal and several others.
Bennett, by the way, failed to mention that. I got that information from the Department of Defense.
Though he’s no longer in the military, he said his work serving the country is far from over.
He’s a training facilitator at Kirtland Air Force Base with the 58th Special Operations Wing, teaching others how to fast-rope out of helicopters.
On top of leading the Purple Hearts group, he also works as a real estate agent and volunteers with Adaptive Sports Program New Mexico.
He’s the father of a 5-year-old girl. “Who has the right to rest on their laurels?” he said. “I don’t care what you did yesterday. What are you doing right now?”
And right now, I’m taking a moment to thank the men and women who, like Bennett, have stood up and answered the call to serve.