FOLSOM, Calif. — Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews got here house to Folsom in time for Independence Day, and hundreds of individuals had been there to welcome him.
“It is surreal,” he mentioned.
He is house after spending the previous 18 months at Walter Reed Nationwide Medical Middle in Maryland studying to reside as a double amputee after a suicide assault exterior the Kabul airport left him severely injured. That August 2021 attacked killed 13 U.S. navy service members assigned to a humanitarian mission and at the very least 170 Afghan civilians, marking the chaotic finish to America’s lengthy battle in Afghanistan.
At a ceremony on the Folsom Professional Rodeo on Sunday night, the group welcomed Vargas-Andrews house and honored different fallen troops.
Vargas-Andrews in remarks to the gang turned the eye to navy service members who didn’t come house from the Kabul mission.
“I am not the primary particular person to get blown up,” Vargas-Andrews mentioned. “These 13 weren’t the primary 13 to get killed — there have been a whole lot of hundreds. It’s extremely straightforward for consideration to be introduced and the help of communities to be sturdy at the start nevertheless it dies off in a short time. These 13 households and the chums of these 13, they’re by no means going to neglect it, and hopefully, the remainder of us will not both.”
One of many 13 was Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, who grew up in close by Roseville. Gee’s sister joined the ceremony on Sunday night to honor her and the others misplaced.
The ceremony additionally acknowledged Marine Capt. John Jeremy Sax of Placer County, who died on June 8 in a Marine plane crash in Southern California.
Of the 18 Marines wounded on the Kabul airport, Vargas-Andrews was probably the most critically injured, shedding his left leg on the hip and his proper arm above the elbow.
He mentioned his surgeons had informed him his bodily health that helped him survive the blast.
“I believe this complete scenario might be my mother’s largest ‘I informed you so,’ second with regard to me enlisting within the Marine Corps, however she’s too good to say it,” Vargas mentioned. “For these family and friends of mine who thought I used to be a maniac for the best way I labored out over time, that is my ‘I informed you so’ second.'”
Vargas-Andrews graduated from Folsom Excessive College in 2016 and joined the Marine Corps the next 12 months. In Kabul, he contributed to humanitarian efforts to reunite Afghan youngsters with their households.
When Vargas-Andrews landed at Sacramento Worldwide Airport on Friday night time, he was met by supporters and escorted house to Folsom by a police motorcade. Vargas-Andrews described the help from the group he acquired upon his return as “unbelievable.”
“We moved to Folsom as a household in 2013 and I by no means knew the group we had till this,” his mom, Tiffany Andrews, mentioned at a information convention on Sunday. “I am so completely satisfied to name this my house after every part.”
All through his restoration Vargas-Andrews mentioned the 13 troops who misplaced their lives in Kabul motivated him to push ahead.
“Most individuals on the skin wanting in assume that what I am doing, what I’ve achieved thus far in restoration, is unimaginable and superb,” Vargas-Andrews mentioned in a speech on the rodeo on Sunday. “I am not a hero. That is one thing I’ve to do for myself and my household, for these 13 actual heroes who should not standing right here in my place.”
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