Army Staff Sergeant Paul C. Mardis, Jr.

His dad had passed away of a medical complication in 1990 and his mom—well, it’s our mommy and dad—our mom passed away in 1994. She had a heart attack in her sleep. So he had already dealt with a lot of loss. His dad died when he was ten and his mom when he was fourteen and a half, so then he came to live with me and my husband at that point.

We were a very close family, and so the first year after my dad passed away my mom spoiled him rotten—you know, gave him everything he ever asked for—and, um, that created a little bit of a complication as he got older then, because he continued to want everything that he asked for, and so at that point my mom was like, “Okay, you need to start learning the value of a dollar.”

So she had him do some odd jobs and some lawn mowing, things like that, and, you know, tried to make sure he had that work ethic, which on my father’s side of the family and my mom also—you know, a very strong work ethic was very much taught from a very young age. So he had no problem, you know, jumping right into that kind of positive mental attitude of working and making his way, and so he learned those values and when he was in high school and junior high school, he started playing football and he excelled at that, was very good at that. And Palmetto High School was very happy to have him playing for their football team when we moved down, so.

When my mom passed away that was a little bit harder on him because, you know, then he didn’t have either parent. But him and I had been very close—we were nine years apart, and so my mom worked as a nurse’s assistant and later in a nursing home on the night shifts, and so in the summertime I basically took him everywhere I went and watched him and spent time with him and hung out with him because she was sleeping in the daytime, so I was already like his mini-mom before he even came to live with us. (laughs)

He was a senior in high school when we moved to Florida—to Manatee County—and so he went to Palmetto High School and had a couple teachers there—one of them was actually from a nearby town in Ohio from where we were from, and that teacher kind of took Paul under their wing and, you know, kind of nurtured him a little bit. Even though Paul didn’t have his parents, he was lucky to have a lot of different adults that kind of guided him, helped—you know, they were sounding boards when he was trying to make important decisions and things, so, his time at Palmetto High School was phenomenal.

He met two very close friends that year even though he was only at Palmetto for one year, and they were in his wedding, so even though he was only there for a year he made some lasting friendships. He was a starter on the football team—on Palmetto High School’s football team—he played linebacker, and he was also their punter, which he had never done before. And he went to the all-star game—I'm thinking it was the state all-star game.

I remember one story he told—of course, they were able to identify and guide bombing and strafing to enemy positions—and one of the politicians, before he was a politician, was with him, or somebody asked him, I forget, but the quote was, “What can we do for you to help you more than what we’re doing?” And his response was “Send me more of these Green Berets.”

He was dedicated to what he was doing. He believed in what he was doing, and he was almost certainly going to reenlist: he loved it, he found a home there. His father was in Vietnam in the Army, I was in the Marine Corps, I think we both had some influence on him—not overtly, just because of who we were—and he, he was a tough hombre.

I was extremely proud of him. When he received his Green Beret after graduating from Robin-Sage—that's a two-year program—I was at Fort Bragg to see that, along with my son and Sherri, and that was one of the proudest moments of my life. It was very moving.

JOHN LAWRENCE: On his first deployment, he and his best friend were both shot. They were what they call “doorknockers”—it’s when you get intel that there’s bad guys in a certain place, then you go try to apprehend them, either by knocking on the door, which usually doesn’t work, or by breaking down the door.

So they were in the process—a lot of the houses over there are compounds, with an adobe brick wall around them, and that’s what this was—and the gate was closed, so they were scaling the wall, and there were three bad guys in the compound.

And his team leader, he was shot and killed inside the wall, and Paul and Mark were at the top of the ladders shooting over the wall into the compound, and they both ran out of ammunition at the same time, so they were replacing their magazines.

SHERRI LAWRENCE: Paul was at the top of the wall, and he was actually shot in his calf muscle by friendly fire on one side of the wall, and in his other calf muscle by enemy fire on the other side of the wall, because he was straddling the top of the wall.

And so he jumped down, he grabbed one of the guys that had been injured and he pulled himself under a Humvee, and pulled that other person—other teammate—under the Humvee with him.

He ended up spending six or nine months recovering from those injuries and that jump down off the wall—he actually pinched a nerve in his neck and his upper shoulder area—and they did not want him to go back over for a second tour. They lost their team leader that day, in that firefight, and another person, like I said, was also injured.

So, Paul said, “I’m going back with my team—we're already down, you know, two men; I can’t leave my team any more short-handed than they already are.” And so he did a lot of physical therapy, and he ended up going for his physical to be released to go back to active duty, and—I believe he was seeing a physician’s assistant, and the physician’s assistant said to him, “You know, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to full-time active duty, you know, you still have this pinched nerve in your neck, I think you need to let it rest some more.”

And so, the story goes—and the story’s from one of his buddies—the story goes that Paul looked at the physician’s assistant and said, “If you don’t sign my paperwork to let me go back over, I’ll go down the hall and find somebody else who will.” And so, that's just the type of person that he was. He was very loyal to his friends and family—he was a protector, he was very much a patriot, and when he said he was going to do something, he did it, so.

He was released to go back over, and when his team went back over, they actually landed at an airport, and they hadn’t even been in Iraq six hours, and their convoy that was leaving the airport—he was with his Special Forces team again—his convoy loaded up their supplies from their flight over, and they were heading out to camp. They hadn’t even made it to camp yet.

And the team leader had told one of Paul’s teammates to grab a rifle and get up in what they call the “crow’s nest” of the Humvee, and then the team leader went to a vehicle further up in the convoy to ride or drive. And Paul looked at his teammate that was told to go up in the crow’s nest, and said, “You know, you have a baby on the way. You have a wife and a family. I don’t have any kids—let me take the crow’s nest.”

And his teammate said, “Are you sure? I was told I need to be up in the crow’s nest.” And Paul said, “No, let me take it, I got it," and Paul took the rifle and climbed up in the crow’s nest. And they were in an unarmored Humvee at the time, and the convoy ended up running over at least one roadside bomb, and Paul took shrapnel through his ear canal into his brain.