Air Force pilot nominated for medal for saving lives
Most heroism medals awarded to airmen are earned through combat.
But some, like Air Force 1st Lt. Jeremy R. Shields of North Las Vegas, are recognized for risking their lives to save endangered civilians off the battlefield.
Brig. Gen. Karl McGregor nominated Shields for the Airman’s Medal for his efforts to save a mother and her baby after a May 5 car accident in Germany.
Shields, a C-17 Globemaster jet pilot, a flight surgeon and two captains from other airlift squadrons had wrapped up a day’s work in early May near their duty station in Germany and were driving on a highway off the Autobahn toward Pirmansens when they came upon the scene of a head-on collision.
Shields and the flight surgeon, Lt. Col. Aaron Greenspan, rushed to the first vehicle, a Ford Focus hatchback, which was shrouded in smoke with its air bags deployed, according to an account published this month at March Air Reserve Base, Calif., where Shields is assigned to the 729th Airlift Squadron.
“Greenspan and I moved toward the unconscious female driver, whose head and shoulders were hanging slightly outside the window,” Shields told the base’s newspaper, The Beacon.
After Greenspan made a quick examination of the woman, the two airmen decided to move her to a safe location to revive her.
“As we were pulling her out of the left side window, I saw an infant car seat inside the rear passenger area. The car seat was overturned and there was debris all around, making it difficult to see,” Shields said.
In an email Friday from Germany, where he is conducting medical evacuations from the war in Afghanistan, Shields said the sight of the dislodged car seat filled him with fear.
“Since no child was readily apparent, I wanted to get the mom out soonest so I could search for a child. Then, a split second later as we were extracting the mom, I saw the baby lodged in the back window,” he wrote in the email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Shields then focused on getting the 3-month-old boy out of the smoking car.
“My instincts kicked in, and I just wanted to do whatever I needed to get the baby out, which included kicking the window in, something I wouldn’t ordinarily think to do.”
After he grabbed the listless infant, Greenspan handed him to Shields who carried him a safe distance away from the smoldering car.
After seeing that occupants of the second vehicle had only cuts and bruises, Greenspan managed to revive the infant’s mother. The dazed woman wandered over to look at her son, snatched him from Shields’ arms and then tossed him 10 feet away into the grass along the road and collapsed.
For a moment, Shields said he thought, “What’s going on here!”
“I raced to get the child and knew that, in the mother’s state, there was no way she was getting near this baby again,” he wrote Friday.
“I honestly felt that the mom was in shock and clearly wasn’t thinking straight, but even with that and supposed motherly instincts, I knew she wouldn’t hold the child again until paramedics arrived.”
Shields took the infant to another car that had stopped and administered first aid by using napkins to apply pressure to a cut on the baby’s head. A few minutes later, the baby began to cry, stronger and stronger, which was a positive sign he would survive.
Fearing that the Ford Focus would explode, Shields left the baby with the car’s occupants and raced to turn off the Focus’ engine by removing its jammed key from the ignition.
He also found some blankets and returned to wrap the baby in them until paramedics arrived.
While on a later mission out of Germany, he learned from officials at Ramstein Air Base that the baby and his mother had been released from the hospital.
The son of a mortician in Ely, Shields grew up close to life’s tragedies. That’s also where he got his inspiration to be a pilot.
“My first airplane ride was a bizarre and macabre affair,” he said in his email. “When I was about four, a man had died and had never been in an airplane. His wife arranged for his casket to be flown over Ely. When my dad dropped him off at the field, the pilot asked if I wanted to go. Of course I was in and have been hooked on flying ever since.”
Shields began flying at 15, and flew regularly until he graduated from a Nevada university in 2001.
“Ely itself is an amazing place that allows a person to dream big things. I think my upbringing there, and the community support you find for anything that you do, is what allowed me to make the switch late in my career to an Air Force pilot,” Shields said.
During college, he worked part time for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and later moved to Washington, D.C., to work on Reid’s staff.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks made him want to become an Air Force pilot.
He moved back to Nevada and, in 2004, interviewed for a pilot’s position to fly C-17 transport jets out of March Air Reserve Base; but didn’t get the slot. He then moved to North Las Vegas in 2005, and eventually worked as aviation director for a Strip resort.
But Shields still yearned to fly “heavies,” for the Air Force as C-17s are sometimes called.
“They didn’t have another board until 2007, which is when I was hired and have been doing it ever since.”
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at
krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
