A young American soldier who would not have hesitated for a second to rescue an elderly lady who had just broken her leg in the middle of a hike, carrying her on his back during hours of descent, would have been decorated for his gesture. last week.
“My first thought was that if I could get her down, I should carry her and get her out of here as quickly as possible. She was really in a lot of pain. I kept telling him ‘a few more steps and we’re there,’” Airman 1st Class Troy May said on Tuesday, according to a US Army press release.
Almost a month after being rescued by the young 20-year-old soldier, Ursula Bannister, 79, has no shortage of words to express her gratitude to “the total altruism and kindness” of the young man and his friends, who dropped everything to help him, she told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
62nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Airman Troy May, 20, was decorated for rescuing Ursula Bannister, 79, Aug. 28, 2024, during a hike.
Courtesy US Army
On August 28, the elderly woman was preparing to begin her descent of the High Rock Lookout alone, a popular hike in Washington that she knew well, when she allegedly stepped into a small hole causing her to fall forward. .
The woman had made the trek every year since she spread her mother’s ashes there 23 years earlier, and decided to set out alone on the widely visited trail after finding no one close to her. accompany him this year.
Except that after his fall, pain would have started to spread through his leg while his foot was no longer pointing in the right direction.
“I knew right away that I had broken my leg,” she said. I tried to get up with my hiking pole and it collapsed on me.”
Immediately, several hikers reportedly came to her rescue, attempting to contact 911, who indicated that it would take five hours for a rescue team to get to her. That’s when Troy May and one of his friends allegedly offered to carry her.
The aviator from the 62nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron would have carried her during most of the three-hour descent, helped at times by his friend Layton Allen, trying to distract the septuagenarian in pain as best they could.
“She had a lot of stories,” Troy May told the Washington Post. We were trying to get her to talk so the hike would go faster…we really had quite a team.”
Other hikers also apparently participated in the rescue, including a stranger who actually offered to exchange his hiking boots with those of the soldier, since they were giving him blisters.
“It was just kindness,” the woman continued to the American media.
Arriving downstairs, the young men allegedly took the lady into their car, put ice on her foot to drive her to a hospital, where they waited for her son to arrive before leaving her in his care.
Ursula Bannister, 79, takes only positives from her hike on August 28 despite the pain, thanks to the kindness and altruism of young US Army aviator Troy May and his friends.
Courtesy US Army
Despite the pain in her leg which turned out to be broken in three places – her tibia, her fibula and her heel – as well as the weeks of convalescence that await her, the woman “overwhelmed with gratitude” only takes positive things from it .
For his part, the young aviator earned a medal of excellence for his “courageous” gesture made purely out of kindness.
“One of the Air Force’s core values is service before self, and Airman 1st Class May clearly exemplified that core value through his actions,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Clifford, 62nd Squadron commander, by press release.
