PRESTON G. HALEY
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Army, Iraq
Preston G. Haley was
born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1978. He grew up in suburban Austintown, and
went through Saint Joseph’s Grade School. Then when he was in 9th grade the
Haley family moved to Stow, Ohio. Preston graduated from Stow High School
in 1996 and then attended Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio for one
year. After the 1997 Spring semester, he left OSU and returned home to take
a job in Stow.
For the next four years Preston worked in either Stow or
Columbus, moving back and forth as he changed jobs several times. Then he
joined the Army. He had signed up shortly before 9/11 and was inducted from
Broadview Heights, Ohio on October 10, 2001. He took Basic Training at Fort
Knox, Kentucky and then was ordered to Fort Bliss, Texas for Advanced
Individual Training. Preston was trained as an Air Defense Command Control
Communications Computers and Intelligence specialist and immediately upon
graduation from the course in June 2002, he was sent to Fort Hood, Texas for
assignment to the 4th Infantry Division.
Upon arrival, Preston
Haley was further assigned to Headquarters &
Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 44th Air Defense Artillery. But,
before he had time to settle in he was placed on a special detail for a
month and a half where he lived and worked off-post in the civilian
community on a mission associated with the President of the United States
whenever he was staying in Crawford. Preston says, “The living was
really, really good and that experience spoiled me for the rest of my time
in the Army.” All too soon, he was back in the unit where training was
all oriented on preparation for deployment, destination unknown; but
somewhere to be committed to action in the war on terrorism. They did not
have to wait long.
On April 1, 2003 Preston’s unit deployed from Fort Hood
to Kuwait. After only a couple of days in Kuwait, Preston and four other
men from the battalion headquarters were deployed with B Battery into Iraq
to the town of Taji. Taji is about an hour’s drive from Tikrit (Saddam
Hussein’s home town) where the 1st Battalion headquarters was about to be
established. Preston Haley
was an Early Warning System Operator on a Sentinel Radar, but; because there
was no Air Defense mission and because Taji was a “hot town,” the unit
quickly became heavily involved in counter insurgency operations, and so,
Preston went out on numerous missions as a driver, gunner or rifleman.
After two months at Taji with B Battery, Preston was selected to be the
battalion Command Sergeant Major’s driver, and so he returned to battalion
headquarters that, by then was established on Forward Operating Base “Iron
Horse,” located in Tikrit.
For the
next four months (June through September) Preston was working for Sergeant
Major Coley who was the “Mayor” of the “Pleasure Palace” in Tikrit. That
was an R&R (rest and recuperation) destination where a thousand soldiers at
a time would come for a brief time away from their unit. Preston says,
“That was also pretty good duty for the mayor’s driver. About mid-September
CSM Coley was reassigned and his replacement came in. For the next two or
three weeks I did a lot of driving because the new Command Sergeant Major
needed to get out, see where all the units were located, and meet the
soldiers.”
On October 1, 2003, after a trip to outlying units,
Preston Haley
was driving for the Sergeant Major as part of a three-vehicle convoy on
Highway 1. They drove into and through an ambush when returning from
Samarra to Tikrit. They were running at 72 miles per hour when an
improvised explosive device (IED) by the side of the road detonated,
damaging Preston’s Humvee, which was closest to the blast. At the same
instant the insurgents unleashed a hail of Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG’s)
and small arms fire. One RPG missed just over the top of the vehicle and a
second one skipped past underneath between the wheels, but, a third rocket
tore through the rear side panel (none of the Humvees were armored at this
time) barely missing Specialist Reyes in the back seat, hit and mortally
wounded the Sergeant Major in the front seat beside Preston, then penetrated
the firewall and exploded against the engine block. It was all over in just
a few seconds because they were traveling at such a high rate of speed that
they were clear of the ambush site almost in the next instant of time.
The other two vehicles had sped on ahead to a
pre-determined rallying point where they called for support. His vehicle
was badly damaged and the tires were blown, but it was still running, and
Preston Haley,
deaf with ruptured eardrums and bleeding from fragmentation wounds, with his
dying sergeant beside him, was still driving as fast as he could. He soon
reached the safety of the rallying point. Military Police secured the site
and after the Sergeant Major’s body was flown out on a Blackhawk Medevac
helicopter all the vehicles drove on into Tikrit.
Preston was treated for fragmentation wounds in the Aid
Station at Forward Operating Base “Iron Horse.” From there he was flown to
the hospital, 15 minutes away, at Camp Spicher where doctors ordered his
evacuation for treatment of his ear damage. On October 5, 2003, just before
he was flown out to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Preston first spoke
at a memorial service for the Sergeant Major, and later in the morning was
awarded the Purple Heart by his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Starsky. After
10 days in Germany, SPC Haley was diagnosed as requiring an operation in the
United States so he was sent back to Fort Hood, Texas and treated by the
audiologists at Darnell Army Medical Center. He was then returned to duty
with the 4th Infantry Division where he served (you guessed it) as driver
for the Chief Of Staff, at that time Colonel Shanahan who at that time was
commanding the rear detachment.
Preston Haley
was granted an “early out” for schooling in August 2004 and he was an
entering student at Austin Community College for the Fall term. Next, he
took a job with ManTech International Corporation, soon jumped to a position
with Northrup Grumman Corporation at Fort Hood, and then moved to Austin
where he has most recently joined Chapter 1919, Military Order of the Purple
Heart. |
