Staff Sergeant Bret Perry saving the world

Chief Tango sends us a link to the story of Staff Sergeant Bret Perry, an Army recruiter in Urbandale, Iowa who spotted a fire in a house on his way to work last year. His instincts influenced him to drive to the scene where he found that firefighters hadn’t arrived yet. A neighbor told him that there were people still inside, so Perry broke down the door to get inside the inferno;

[H]e had to crawl since the rooms were filled with smoke by then.

“It was completely smoke filled in the living room and the hallway and stuff like that so I was searching for doors and, you know, I would open a door and it would be the pantry or I’d open a door and it would be a bathroom or something,” said Perry. “So I was just checking all the doors.”

In the first room he found a sleeping woman, who woke up when he kicked the bedroom door open, and took her outside to safety. He went back in two more times for two other people, but was unable to go back in a fourth time for the pet that they had in there as the fire had become to dangerous by then.

Perry described the residents as “young adults,” probably in their mid-20s, who appeared to be sharing the house.

After successfully getting the three residents out of the house and when the fire department finally arrived, he left and went back to work, just a few blocks away, without leaving his name or contact information with anybody, which is why it was a surprise to him when news reporters found him later that day.

Staff Sergeant Perry was awarded the Soldier’s Medal for his non-combat heroism a week or so ago.

Category: Real Soldiers