Vandenberg Solider Wounded, Receives Purple Heart
Is Being Transported to Bethesda to Recover
Vandenberg Air Force Base announced today that Airman First Class Michael Brady, a combat cameraman with Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing who had been deployed to the 732nd Air Expeditionary Group, Balad Air Base, was supplying visual information for soldiers on Oct. 12 near Ad Diwaniyah, Iraq when he was shot in the neck by enemy fire. Brady was treated at a military hospital in Baghdad and later at a facility in Balad, Iraq. Brady subsequently received the Purple Heart and the Iraqi Campaign Medal from Brigadier General Burt Field on Oct. 14. “They told me in Baghdad that this was a million dollar wound, like in Forrest Gump,” Brady wrote in a letter to his family.
According to the statement from Vandenberg, he will likely regain the ability to speak. He is currently being moved to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The 30th Space Wing has more than 200 Airmen deployed throughout the world with 60 percent of Vandenberg’s Airmen performing “in-lieu-of” tasks, a variety of non-traditional combat and combat support missions to aid the Army that includes camerawork that supplies other soldiers with information.