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- The People Behind The Sacrifice
Army Sgt. Andrew Joseph Baddick
Died September 29, 2003 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom
26, of Jim Thorpe, Pa.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Fort Bragg, N.C.; drowned Sept. 29 as he tried to rescue another soldier whose vehicle had entered a canal near Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq.
As his older sister remembers it, Sgt. Andrew Joseph Baddick never thought twice before rushing to help someone. “He feared nothing,” Elizabeth Hoherchak said. “Nothing. There was no hesitation in him.”
Baddick, 26, of Jim Thorpe, Pa., drowned Sept. 29 when he tried to rescue another soldier whose vehicle had plunged into a canal in Iraq. He was stationed at Fort Bragg.
Baddick had been serving in Afghanistan before going to Iraq, said Charles McHugh, a family friend.
“I knew the boy all his life; I watched him grow up,” McHugh said. “All he wanted to do was be in the Army and be a paratrooper, and he succeeded.”
Paratrooper from Pa. killed in Iraq
Associated Press
A paratrooper stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., drowned while trying to save another soldier in Iraq, the Defense Department said Wednesday, and a Veterans Affairs official said he was from Pennsylvania.
Sgt. Andrew J. Baddick, 26, died Monday, according to both a Pentagon news release and Charles McHugh, director of the Carbon County, Pa., Veterans Affairs Office.
According to the Pentagon, Baddick was trying to rescue another soldier whose vehicle had entered a canal near Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq when he drowned.
Military authorities did not say where Baddick was from, but McHugh said Baddick was from Jim Thorpe. McHugh, a friend of the family, said the military had informed Baddick’s mother, Ann, of his death.
“I knew the boy all his life; I watched him grow up,” McHugh said. “All he wanted to do was be in the Army and be a paratrooper, and he succeeded.”
McHugh said Baddick, a paratrooper with Headquarters Company, 82nd Airborne Division, had been stationed in Afghanistan before coming to Iraq one or two months ago.
Baddick, a 1997 graduate of Jim Thorpe Area Senior High School, enlisted in the Army in 1999 and re-enlisted for another six years in 2001, McHugh said.