Sgt. Perkins receiving the Soldier's Medal Tuesday at Fort Drum. Photo: 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division on Facebook
(12/14/11) Fort Drum soldier Sergeant Jacob Perkins was awarded the Soldier's Medal Tuesday afternoon at the installation. The medal is given to soldiers for heroism outside the battlefield.
Sergeant Perkins came to the aid of a group of Canadian tourists in July, when their tour bus collided with a semi trailer on the Thruway in Waterloo, New York, between Syracuse and Rochester. Joanna Richards was at the ceremony at Fort Drum and has this report.
Several hundred soldiers gathered at an
auditorium on Fort Drum on Tuesday afternoon to watch Sargeant Jacob Perkins receive the Soldier's Medal. A
letter from Secretary of the Army and former North Country
Congressman John McHugh was read aloud, giving a brief overview of Perkins's actions on July 22. Then the commander of
the 10th Mountain Division, Major General Mark Milley,
pinned the Soldier's Medal onto the sergeant's uniform.
There were wounded
outside the bus, strewn about, in a variety of states of disbelief
and shock, and many, many were injured. The back of the bus was
completely engulfed in flames, and Sgt. Perkins heard someone say,
“They're still in there.” And in an instant, without regard to
his own life, he entered a burning bus that was full of smoke, and he
started getting people out.
After helping five people out of the
bus, Perkins returned, despite the flames. He searched for any
remaining survivors. And he couldn't see, so he had to feel for them,
seat by seat.
Milley said had there been bullets
flying on a battlefield at that moment, Perkins would be getting the
Medal of Honor.
Perkins also teamed up with the leader
of the tourist group to conduct a head count and move passengers away
from the fire. When family members needed to get to a hospital,
Perkins took them himself.
After the ceremony,
Perkins was shy and terse, saying that he just did what any soldier
would do in the same circumstances. "I guess sometimes I
think, I don't know, why didn't I think? But um, the Army has me
trained to be ready for anything, unusual circumstances, and I was
just glad that it actually kicked in and I was there to help."
First
Sergeant Steven Johnson is one of Perkins's superiors.
"We do everything to
stay away from fire. You know, it's nothing specific we train for.
Um, he said his training took over. You know, I think a lot of that
is the calm, the being a leader under fire. Whether it's a fire, or
whether it's direct fire from a weapons system, it's being able to be
calm in that circumstance and make sound decisions, and that's what
he did."
Perkins
joins just over 18,000 soldiers who have been awarded the Soldier's
Medal since its inception in 1926.
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