Hartselle soldier, Purple Heart recipient, recalls drone attack
For the Enquirer
Chaos and blood awakened Sgt. Jared McKelvy of Hartselle in January while he was sleeping at an Army base near the Jordan-Syrian border.
A one-way attack drone struck the soldier’s base on Jan. 28, killing three soldiers and injuring 47 others, according to the U.S. Central Command, including McKelvy.
“It hit about 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday, and I was sleeping in,” said McKelvy, 27, who is with the 663rd Engineering Company, an Army Reserve unit out of Sheffield.
“I have a pretty solid memory of it,” McKelvy said. “I don’t remember hearing the drone or even it crashing, but I just remember waking up.” The attack on Tower 22 – a logistics and support hub – was the first to kill U.S. service members since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to news reports. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq was responsible for the attack. The soldiers were stationed at Tower 22 – just “Tower” to the soldiers – to support U.S., coalition and partnernation efforts to maintain stability in the region, the U.S. Army said.
Killed were three Army reserve soldiers out of Georgia – Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders of Waycross; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett of Savannah.
McKelvy said he and his fellow soldiers were sleeping in their living quarters – a building called a CHU (pronounced “choo”), which stands for containerized housing unit – when the attack occurred.
“It’s the size of a single-wide trailer, maybe a little bit smaller, and it’s got three rooms,” he said. “They are two-man rooms. My roommate was one of the ones who had to get flown out. I don’t remember all of his injuries. He had burns on his legs and might have had a broken bone or two. His injuries were more critical than mine.” The roommate was one of eight wounded soldiers who were flown from the base for treatment, according to the Army. Central Command said about 350 U.S. Army and Air Force personnel were deployed to the base at the time of the attack.
McKelvy suffered what he called a “mild” traumatic brain injury, shrapnel burns, a cut on his left palm that was bleeding profusely and minor scratches and bruises on his legs and back.
“The blood from my hand injury kind of got their attention but they didn’t have to stitch it; they glued it,” he said.
In the aftermath of the attack, McKelvy received a Purple Heart, an Army commendation medal with “V” device for valor, and another with a “C” device for combat.
“Everyone got a commendation medal with “C” device if they were in a combat environment, whether they got hit or not,” he said.
On June 18, dozens of family members and supporters welcomed McKelvy home from the airport.
State Sen. Arthur Orr spoke at the event. “It really is a homecoming, Jared, and we would just like to say thank you and what a great community Hartselle is to come out like this and express their gratitude to you for all that you’ve done for our country, for our community .” McKelvy agreed to speak with The Decatur Daily after he had spent some time at home.
-Adapting overseas McKelvy arrived at Tower in September 2023 as a horizontal construction engineer.
“I was a heavy-equipment operator – dozers, graders and dump trucks,” he said.
To ease homesickness, he watched videos of his boy, high-energy Jackson McKelvy.
“The Wi-Fi wasn’t perfect over there but when I had a chance to get on it my wife, Alissa, would constantly send videos of my little one,” he said. “He’s 3 years old and he’s been doing a lot while I’ve been gone. He’s been in swim lessons and karate, so she would send me videos from his karate class and of him swimming.” He also used his down time to work on physical fitness and weightlifting.
Two days before the attack, he set the Tower record in the powerlifting competition, he said.
“I had the best overall with the squat, bench and deadlift – I had one rep for 1,630 pounds,” he said. “So that kind of made me stand out even more than surviving the blast.” Following the attack, after he was moved to H5 base in Jordan, he broke another base record by lifting 1,642 pounds. He was then moved to Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, also in Jordan, and competed in another powerlifting competition and there lifted 1,609 pounds, he said.
McKelvy had put in five years just before the drone strike occurred. He’s unsure if he will reenlist.
“I’m undecided,” he said. “I have a year left on my contract, so I have a year to think about it. I’m still on the fence.” He has another career to fall back on should he opt for civilian life. He has been a computer numerical control (CNC) operator for seven years and works for Tanksley Tool and Machine in Decatur.
“The place I work in now makes a lot of aerospace type stuff,” he said. “We make parts for Blue Origin in Huntsville and others. I even had a kind of fullcircle moment in that I got to make parts for Apache helicopters. Before that job I had another job as a CNC machinist making hydraulic cylinders.” McKelvy, a Priceville High School graduate, is also making opportunities for himself. He was recently accepted by the University of Alabama, where he plans to pursue a degree in either mechanical engineering or business. In the meantime, he’s been adventuring with little Jackson. Jackson was only two when Jared went overseas but he turned three on March 1.
“He does karate every Monday, so I get to watch him do that. And we swim a lot. We pretty much run around and be boys,” he said. “I love it.” Returning home has not been easy.
“From the get-go it was pretty tough,” McKelvy said. “I’ve been home exactly a month and I feel like I’ve adjusted pretty well now. I have somewhat of a tough time sleeping, but I know that would be common with anybody coming home from kind of a stressful deployment.” McKelvy has his own vivid memories as well as two memorial T-shirts of the fallen soldiers – one shirt with images of their faces on it – that help him mark the tragedy.
“The event will always be in the back of my head,” he said. “I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t think about them.”
