Spokane man honored for actions in Afghanistan

The day started like so many others in the skies above Afghanistan. By the time it ended, a Spokane soldier would be part of a team that earned an Army Commendation Medal for valor.

It was Jan. 12 and Mark Edens was inside his Army unit’s UH 60 Black Hawk helicopter designed to pluck the injured from chaos and whisk them to waiting surgeons.

The 2006 Riverside High School graduate had been aboard the helicopter as a flight medic more than 1,000 times in the past year when the call crackled over the speaker: a 3-year-old Afghan girl had been hurt. Shrapnel had torn up her back. She needed to be airlifted.

The helicopter crew spun into action. They rescue – or medevac in military parlance – soldiers and Afghan nationals alike in need of medical help because of military operations.

As Edens, a specialist with the New Mexico Army National Guard, and the helicopter crew neared the pickup zone in a dangerous area near the Helmand River, a group of four Marines carrying a patient approached.

They didn’t bring a child. They were carrying a comrade, a fellow Marine with the tail-end of an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade protruding from his upper leg.

“We were surprised, that’s for sure,” said Edens, a self-described quiet person who shies from recognition. “But we were there to do a job. Any other soldier I serve with would do the same.”

The crude weapon, 15 inches long with an explosive, had been launched by the enemy and sliced into the leg of Marine Cpl. Winder Perez. It failed to detonate but embedded deep into Perez’s body, piercing his intestines.

Rules governing safety don’t require the helicopter crew to transport unexploded ordnance. But this episode was extraordinary. Perez was going to die.

So the officer in command, helicopter pilot Capt. Kevin Doo, asked each of his crew if they would agree to bring the danger aboard. All agreed and Perez was placed into the custody of Edens for the trip.

The next minutes of flight were a mix of fright and pride as Doo piloted the Black Hawk as smoothly and quickly as he could.

They landed in an empty field where a special surgery team – walled from onlookers and dressed in armor – removed the explosive and finished the job of saving Perez.

The exploits and bravery of the helicopter crew, which also included Sgt. Robert Hardisty, were rewarded last week as they returned home to a hero’s welcome with the rest of their unit to Albuquerque, N.M.

Eden’s mother, Jayne Moore, said her son exemplifies the compassion and good that unfolds along with the tragedies in Afghanistan.

She describes her son as a young man of common sense. He played football and baseball at Riverside and moved to New Mexico to attend college.

As his interests and major changed, he decided to join the National Guard and then volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan.

Earlier this year he signed up for six more years and said he might be redeployed even as the United States begins to withdraw from the region.

Moore, who works at Northwest Pea & Bean in Spokane Valley, worries but knows her son wants to be in a place where help is needed.

“He’s that kind of person,” she said. “We’re lucky to have him.”