MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. -- The Air Force’s Honor Guard serves as the embodiment of our core values, ensuring our standards of excellence are upheld across the Air Force. Seven of Maxwell’s newest Honor Guardsmen were bestowed Air Force Achievement Medals, July 18, 2019, for putting the Air Force core values into action in another’s time of need.
While driving back to base from a funeral detail, the Honor Guardsmen stopped to help a local woman, whose garage had suddenly caught fire and was spreading to her house, June 22, near Molton, Alabama.
“I just wanted to make sure she was okay,” said Senior Airman Forrest Bivens, Maxwell Honor Guardsmen. “She was an elderly woman, so I knew she had probably lived there for a while and had a lot of memories in that house. I lost my home to a tornado in Oklahoma and you can’t rebuild those memories. I just wanted to make sure no one was in the house and to do what we could.”
After taking a wrong turn while heading back to base, the Airmen noticed a large cloud of smoke forming above the tree line, but did not realize the severity of the situation until they got further down the road.
Airman 1st Class Brandon Hedelund, Maxwell Honor Guardsmen, said they felt compelled and wanted to help her in any way they could.
Once on scene, one Airman called 911, another ran to inform the woman’s neighbor of the situation and the rest got to work to try to keep the flames at bay.
Hedelund said the heat radiating from the flames was so intense that it felt like he was being burned by a stove.
Over the course of nearly an hour, they worked as a team to keep the flames from spreading to the house until the local fire department arrived and took control of the situation.
The group of Airmen joked that they were ‘better at fighting the fire than they were during the detail,’ as they were all very new to Honor Guard at the time.
They said that a lot of unexpected things happened that day and it was an experience that they will always remember.