News

Legacy of caring crosses services, families

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Nick Przybyciel
  • 446th Public Affairs
MCCHORD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. --  His throat clogged with gravel and face covered in blood, Army Sgt. Jeff Beltran tried in vain to call out to his fellow Soldiers. The improvised explosive device that nearly obliterated the Humvee he was riding in a moment ago cast a deafening silence in the aftermath of the explosion – a silence Sergeant Beltran was unable to break because of the grit he was choking on. 

Meanwhile Staff Sgt. Selina Barone, 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, was taking care of injured military personnel as a flight medic. She was incessantly concerned about her son, an Army medic serving in Iraq, and always asked the patients on her flights if they knew him. 

Sergeant Beltran and Sergeant Barone, although worlds apart at that time, would soon have their lives linked by a twist of fate. When a chance encounter between the two happened, it provided a wounded soldier with comfort and a worried mother with reassur-ance. 

The subtle mechanisms of fate began their inconspicuous work on the morning of May 29. The day started off as any other for Ser-geant Beltran, a combat engineer squad leader serving in Iraq from the 70th Engineer Battalion. His unit was conducting operations in Taji, located on the outskirts of Baghdad. He was part of a three-member patrol crew, and that morning found him cruising around in a Humvee looking for anything strange. They were on their third pass of a seemingly low-key location and nothing seemed out of the ordinary … until the blast. 

A massive explosion ripped the rear end off their vehicle; a rat’s nest of twisted metal remained where the vehicle was severed. The Soldiers had fallen prey to an improvised explosive device. 

Sergeant Beltran was violently thrown from the gunner’s hatch. His helmet slammed into his face, and blood was streaming from the subsequent wound. After regaining consciousness, he found himself immersed in an eerie silence. Just moments ago, the Hum-vee’s roar as it ripped through the barren desert town was filling his ears. Now, there was nothing. 

“All I remember is waking up on the ground with my leg thumping,” Sergeant Beltran said. “My first inclination was to think if my Soldiers were all right.” 

Recalling critical survival skills taught to all Soldiers, Sergeant Beltran performed a self-assessment. He wiggled his toes. He steadied his breathing. He tried moving his legs, but that didn’t work out so well. 

“I knew I had to pull security no matter what. I thought, ‘Where’s my M-16?’ I realized the gunner had it, so I tried to grab my 9 millimeter,” Sergeant Beltran said. 

In a moment that Sergeant Beltran said felt like an eternity, he scanned the horizon looking for the enemy, but couldn’t spot any. However, he did have luck in locating the Humvee’s driver. Laid out in front of him, knocked completely out of his body armor and covered in an inch of dirt, the driver didn’t respond to Sergeant Beltran’s calls. 

Help soon arrived, and this is where Sergeant Beltran’s and Sergeant Barone’s lives became entwined. 

One of the Soldiers rushing to aid the patrol crew was a young combat medic from the same unit as Sergeant Beltran, Spc. Mitch Barone. After administering an I.V. and stabilizing Sergeant Beltran, Specialist Barone gave a few words of encouragement before the Soldier was air-lifted to safety. 

“When I arrived the Humvee was cut in half; from the driver’s door back was gone,” said Specialist Barone. “I checked out the driver, he had some small cuts on his face, otherwise he was fine. I treated Sgt. Beltran and an evac was called, we put the driver and Sgt. Beltran on it.” 

“Barone told me everything’s going to be alright,” Sergeant Beltran said. “Maybe out of defiance of surviving the blast, or just try-ing to block it out, I flipped them [his fellow Soldiers] off. It was an expression of, ‘Hey, I’m going back. I’m alright.’” 

Miraculously, all three Soldiers survived the explosion. The gunner was cleared immediately for duty, and the driver was given the okay 72 hours later. However, Sergeant Beltran may never completely heal from his wounds, and it would take months of rehabilita-tion before he could go back to light duty. 

His injuries included a shattered knee and a broken tibia. He now has 90 degrees of motion in the knee that was injured, but doctors warned him it is not likely he will regain the full 150 degrees of motion that is in a normal knee, he said. 

After spending a month in various hospitals, Sergeant Beltran was finally on his way back home. During a flight from Scott AFB, Ill., a flight medic caught his eye. Although the flight medic was a complete stranger, Sergeant Beltran had good reason to feel she looked familiar. She was the mother of Specialist Barone – the Soldier who came to Sergeant Beltran’s aid when he was wounded. 

Leading up to that moment, Sergeant Barone was performing her duties on the flight while trying to get word on her son from the Soldiers she was caring for. Today would be her lucky day. 

She found a Soldier from the 70th Engineer Battalion, the same unit that her son and Sergeant Beltran belonged to. The Soldier in-formed her that not only was her son safe, but had also saved a man’s life. Pointing out Sergeant Beltran, the Soldier recounted the story to Sergeant Barone. 

“I was keeping to myself at the back of the plane,” Sergeant Beltran said. “It was toward the end of the trip when I noticed her talk-ing to someone from my unit. I was looking at her and her face looked familiar. ‘Where do I know this person?’ I thought.” 

Sergeant Barone made her way over to Sergeant Beltran. “I introduced myself and pointed to my name tag and said, ‘I’m Mitch’s mother.’ He started crying and after a moment or two he told me Mitch was the one who came to his aid,” Sergeant Barone said. 

Sergeant Beltran was incredulous: “What are the chances? One family member saves your life and the other is on the plane to wish you Godspeed,” he said. 

With this brief encounter, Sergeant Beltran became a human connection in a family legacy of caring for servicemembers, past down from mother to son. 

However, a legacy was never in Specialist Barone’s mind when he enlisted in the Army. “I actually wanted to be an MP, but at MEPS I found out I was color deficient. This left me with the choices of administration, communications or medic. I hate paperwork and I’m not the communications type,” he said. 

Nevertheless, Specialist Barone’s deeds in Iraq provided a much-needed affirmation to his mother. Like a lot of parents who have children that join the military, Sergeant Barone was worried if it was the right choice for her son, she said. 

“I did not want my son to join the Army. But, you just never know how these things are going to reward you,” she said. 

And Sergeant Barone wasn’t the only one rewarded by her son’s actions – Sergeant Beltran is undoubtedly grateful that Specialist Barone was there when he needed him.