While deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Garcia saved the lives of two pilots who were critically injured after landing their helicopter on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. Garcia jumped 10 feet from his helicopter into hostile territory and a field of IEDs to provide lifesaving emergency care and move the two pilots out of the line of fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Tango sends us brief links to the story of Air Force Master Sergeant Matthew A. Garcia who was awarded the Army’s Soldiers Medal for his quick thinking and disregard for his own safety while he rescued two helicopter pilots when their aircraft landed on an IED; While deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force","category-real-soldiers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Matt-Garcia.jpg?fit=656%2C531&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-flx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Matt](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Matt-Garcia-300x243.jpg?resize=300%2C243\")
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