FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Army News Service) -- A colonel serving with the Defense Logistics Agency at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, found the agency's mission of supporting the warfighter took on a deeper and more dangerous meaning on the battlefield.
On Nov. 12, Col. Rick Ellis, commander of the DLA support team in Afghanistan, was preparing to run in a Veterans Day 5K across from the Bagram Support Group headquarters.
It was 5:30 a.m., 45 minutes before the start of the race. Dressed in his running gear, Ellis walked up the main road, where a few people were walking in either direction. He saw a group of people walking toward him.
"I didn't immediately recognize who they were, but as I passed them, I [saw] one of my compadres, Col. Chris Colavita," Ellis said.
Colavita is the 1st Cavalry Division Resolute Support sustainment brigade commander. They slowed briefly to exchange playful taunts and then continued on their separate ways.
"I said to him, 'Hey, don't fall out of the run, old man,'" Colavita remembered. "That little engagement that I had with Col. Ellis was enough to put me toward the back of the gaggle I was with."
Not more than 90 seconds later, there was an explosion.
"This is Afghanistan; we get explosions sometimes," Ellis said. "So I did what we always do. I hit the deck and covered my head because I initially thought it was an indirect fire."
Ellis didn't hear any sirens or warnings, so he broke with regular protocol and looked up. He first saw people running toward him and then looked over his shoulder and saw a billowing black cloud of smoke behind him.
"I came upon a Soldier who was later identified as Pfc. Robert Healy," he recalled. Healy was bleeding profusely from his left hand, and another Soldier had a hold of his arm, helping him elevate his wounded hand above his head.
"I tried to calm him down a little bit," Ellis said. "I said, 'I'm Rick, from DLA. Just stay calm.'"
Ellis asked Healy where his tourniquet was, since all deployed service members are equipped with one. "He had enough mental acuity at that point [to tell me] his tourniquet was in his left pants pocket," Ellis said.
After applying the tourniquet, Ellis realized Healy was in pain and his sense of panic was elevated; Healy insisted he needed to get to a hospital. Again, Ellis attempted to calm him.
Ambulances had yet to arrive, so Ellis helped Healy into a police car. "We told the policeman to get him down to the hospital, which is about 100 meters down the road," Ellis said.
Once they departed, Ellis revisited the scene to see who else he could assist. He saw Colavita, who had been rendered temporarily unconscious from the blast. "We all got blown to the ground," Colavita said. "It was a bloody, horrific scene -- like something out of a movie."
"When I got to Col. Colavita, I told him that I had taken care of one of his guys and gotten him to the hospital, and he was going to be OK," Ellis said. It wasn't until Ellis spoke with Colavita that he learned the explosion was the result of a suicide bomber.
"When he got to me, I was just angry at this cowardly bomber," Colavita said. "[Ellis] was a calming presence."
Colavita said everything was foggy because of the fumes from the bomb. At first, there was no movement or sound. "These are all my Soldiers; I'm the commander," he said. "I start walking into this carnage and start to assess casualties and look for secondary explosive devices or another threat."
In all, five died and more than a dozen were wounded as a result of the attack.
Colavita later spoke to many of the injured Soldiers and their family members, including Healy's mother. She asked him to help her find "Rick from the EOD [explosive ordnance disposal detachment]." She said her son wanted to thank the man who saved his arm and, possibly, his life.
"I laughed and said, 'Rick from EOD is actually Col. Rick Ellis, a good friend of mine from DLA,'" Colavita said.
Even after Colavita arranged a telephone call to reunite Ellis and Healy, Healy still referred to Ellis simply as "Rick."
"'You're never going to be a colonel to this guy; you're always going to be Rick,'" Colavita told Ellis. "'You're just going to have to be OK with that.' And he is."
"My perspective is, I did the thing that anybody would have done," Ellis said.
He attributes his lifesaving actions to first-responder training and to the tourniquets. "It's a testament to the piece of equipment itself, how easy it is to use," Ellis said.
Ellis's remarkable actions earned him the honor of the Combat Action Badge, Colavita said.
"He very humbly accepted it; I never even told him I was [nominating him]," Colavita said.
Social Sharing