Staff Sergeant Victor Gomoimunn saving the world
Todd sends us a story from the Stars & Stripes which tells the tale of Staff Sergeant Victor Gomoimunn in Osan, South Korea. the sergeant was driving with his family to the grocery store when he saw smoke coming from a home in his neighborhood. He encountered the home owner who told him that his wife, Sun Yong Helmer, and child were still in the apartment.
“No one was doing anything — so I went,” Gomoimunn said.
He climbed up what he thought was a water pipe but turned out to be for gas and reached Helmer, a civilian employee who was working as a nurse at Camp Humphreys. Helmer and her husband have since been transferred to Germany.
Helmer was shocked to find a stranger outside her window.
“I felt horrified, but he brought big comfort,” she said. “He tried to examine the rooms and see what he could do.”
While initially hoping to bring Helmer and child down, Gomoimunn decided it would be safer to bring Helmer and her 10-month-old daughter to the balcony and wait for firefighters.
Twenty minutes later firefighters arrived and escorted all three out of the building.
[…]
“If my wife and kids were stranded in a fire and I wasn’t able to do anything, I would pray for someone who could,” he told Stars and Stripes Wednesday in a telephone interview from the southeastern port city of Pohang, where he is participating in a military exercise.
Category: Real Soldiers
Another real hero.
Poser, take note – this is what you can only dream you were like.
BZ, SSG and family!
“He encountered the home owner who told him that his wife, Sun Yong Helmer, and child were still in the apartment.” No mention that the man was injured. If not, he failed where a real man, one Victor Gomoimunn, succeeded.
He could have been injured, of a physical condition where he did not have the ability to climb the pipe, or any number of other factors.
I hesitate to cast stones at him without knowing full details – and refuse to view the husband as somehow less manly than the SSG.
Everyone of us needs assistance from time to time – someone to do what we, for whatever reason(s), cannot to.
Every. Single. One. Of. Us.
I’m not casting stones. I’m saying that he has none. I cannot imagine a husband and father doing nothing while his family was inside. But the world needs cowards. That helps us to ID the heroes.
“They [the hero, his wife, and their children] stopped and joined a crowd of people gathered around the building. Helmer’s [the Mom] husband said his wife and child were trapped on the third floor and his attempts to reach the apartment had failed.”
Every earlier acct I read nicely omitted the fact that one of the bystanders was the husband, the father of the 10-month old. I get that when the shit hits the fan, some people freeze, others run away, and a few go towards the danger.
Combed the gas pipe? Wow.
He did a fine job. Good for him. We need more like him.
The army didn’t give him a life saving medal? cheap bastards!
Always good to have one of these stories to counterbalance stories of the misbehavior or our few less-than-wise servicemen overseas. I spent 4 years on Okinawa (mid 2012 – mid 2016) and had my liberties locked down very frequently for the malfeasance of others.
Good job there, Victor!!
BZ!