LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
Members of the 37th Training Group had a chance to meet a hero June 6 when Purple Heart recipient Staff Sgt. Matthew Slaydon and his wife Annette took time from therapy and rehabilitation to talk with students from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Indoctrination Course and the Security Forces Officers' Course at Camp Bullis.
Sergeant Slaydon was critically injured when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was clearing convoy routes in Iraq Oct. 24.
The sergeant from the 56th Civil Engineer Squadron at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., was on his third deployment.
Sergeant Slaydon said the explosion was about 2 feet from his face, leaving him completely blind and causing him to lose his left arm.
"It took my arm off, smashed my face in, broke my jaw, broke out my tooth, gave me moderate traumatic brain injury, collapsed my lung, and in the helicopter, my heart stopped," Sergeant Slaydon explained to the EOD students, adding, "This is not a career field for the weak, and you need to be ready to accept that this is a possibility."
Sergeant Slaydon wanted to talk with the students to explain to them that while the career they're embarking on is extremely dangerous, it's a worthy profession critical to the Global War on Terror.
"There are hundreds of people alive today because I did my job and my team did their job," he said.
"Saving lives and knowing there are people who are walking and talking and fathers who are home with their children right now because we did our job makes it all worth it. This is the price that's paid for them living."
Lt. Col. Tim Farrell, 37th Training Group deputy commander, was grateful for the chance to visit with Sergeant Slaydon and believes the student's chance to meet him may have a profound impact on their training and perhaps their lives.
"I truly believe those young men and women who had the privilege to listen to Matt and Annette talk about what's truly important in preparing for and executing deployments just might make one or two of them pay a little more attention to detail, study and prepare a little harder," he said. "And that might be the difference in passing or failing a course here, and in saving some lives down the road."
During his career, Sergeant Slaydon completed close to 150 missions, knocking out more than 65 bombs and blowing up more than 150,000 pounds of enemy ordnance. "I've never known that you could have that level of satisfaction when you blow an IED up," he said. "You go down and you clear it, giving the thumbs up and the road opens and nobody dies."
Sergeant Slaydon started his Air Force career in 1989, serving as a weapon systems technician working on A-10s and F-16s. He separated after nine years, working outside the Air Force for three years until he grew bored and enlisted in the Air Force Reserve, volunteering to serve in an explosive ordnance disposal unit.
Near the end of his second deployment to Kirkuk, Iraq, Sergeant Slaydon loved what he was doing so much he decided to go back on active duty. He volunteered for a third deployment, once again ending up in Kirkuk, where he suffered his injuries.
But despite those injuries, he has no regrets and would do it all over again, adding that he would give anything to be able to be back in the field with his team who just got orders to go back to Kirkuk.
Since he can't do it in uniform anymore, he plans to do it in the civilian world working as a psychologist working with veterans so he "can still help fix things and help bring them home in a different way."
"I like to fix things," he said. From working with A-10s and F-16s to clearing roadways, and moving or recovering a damaged vehicle or fatalities, Sergeant Slaydon hopes to continue that tradition with people.