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A Member Of The Elite

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By ANDY STAPLES The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 6, 2007

Updated: 09/06/2007 12:11 am

GAINESVILLE - Derek Baldry noticed the noise first.

'I used to run outside,' he said, 'and listen to the crowd roar.'

When the University of Florida football team crossed the goal line, the blast of sound shot up from Florida Field and tumbled past Baldry's boyhood home.

He never imagined the roar would be for him. By the time Baldry entered Gainesville High, he didn't play sports. He rarely worried about his classes. He spent most of his days with a freestyle BMX bicycle and an apathetic attitude.

Near the end of Baldry's junior year, he stood with his mother, Kim, on the back porch discussing his poor academic record when an Army recruiter called. Derek listened to the soldier's pitch. Later, he told his mother he might enlist after high school.

'It was pretty ironic,' Kim Baldry said. 'We'd been threatening to send him to military school.'

Instead, the reformed miscreant who would become the unlikeliest of Florida walk-ons volunteered to send himself to war. Not that Derek Baldry knew that at the time. He enlisted in June 2000, about 15 months before jumbo jets piloted by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

'There was no patriotism involved,' said Baldry, 25. 'Remember, this was pre-9/11. ... I didn't really know what I was going to do, so I decided I would try to do fun stuff like jump out of planes and blow things up.'

To get the full jumping-out-of-planes and blowing-things-up experience, Baldry signed up for the Army's selective 75th regiment, the Rangers. At Ranger Indoctrination - a gauntlet of challenges mental and physical - Baldry learned the Rangers creed, which includes the following passage:

'Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move farther, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.'

Soon after, Baldry would have to do all those things.

Movies Never Get It Right

The thing about a firefight that the movies never get right, Baldry said, is the noise.

'It's just fury. It's chaotic,' he said. 'There's no rhythm to it.'

In the movies, good guys and bad guys dress in different uniforms and line up opposite each other. To a Ranger in Afghanistan, a bad guy could be a Taliban fighter, a Chechnyan mercenary or an al-Qaeda operative disguised as a villager.

Even the Army's best training can't completely prepare a man for flying bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. Baldry always fell back on one prevailing instinct.

'Ultimately,' he said, 'you want to live.'

Baldry's 3rd Ranger Battalion arrived in Afghanistan 23 days after Sept. 11. After one mission, Baldry, then 19, and his fellow Rangers convened in a hangar expecting a debriefing. They found two coffins, each holding a fellow Ranger.

'It's the first thing in my life that's ever been permanent,' Baldry said. 'I think it's just the realization that when you lose someone, they don't come back.'

In Gainesville the next day, Baldry's father, Geo, walked to the end of his driveway and picked up The Gainesville Sun. A headline read 'Two Rangers Killed.'

'My blood ran cold,' Geo Baldry said.

Every day that passed without a soldier knocking on the door soothed the Baldrys. A few days later, Derek called home.

Baldry would spend 13 months in Afghanistan - from Oct. 3, 2001, to Jan. 4, 2002, with the 3rd Ranger Battalion and from June 2003 to April 2004 with the 10th Mountain Division. There, he met Jermaine Wilson, a future mixed martial arts fighter who would invite Baldry to be a groomsman in his wedding. He met Jeff Meredith, a former Louisiana-Monroe safety who would put Baldry through football practice drills during rare down time, and who, following a grueling five-day patrol in October 2003, arrived back at the chow hall to trash talk from Baldry about Florida's recent win at LSU.

Baldry also met Ryan Long, whose name he wears on his wrist every day.

'Worst Thing I've Ever Been Through'

It was Long who saw Baldry's solid 6-foot-6 frame and wondered why Baldry hadn't played football. The pair bonded while risking their lives traversing the mountains of Afghanistan, chasing 'high-value' targets that included the most valuable target of all, Osama bin Laden.

Long had almost finished his hitch when the Army asked him to go to Iraq. On April 3, 2003, the Delaware native was guarding a checkpoint when a pregnant woman jumped from a car. When Long and four other soldiers ran toward the woman, a man in the car detonated a bomb, killing all five soldiers.

'Going to his funeral was definitely the worst thing I've ever been through,' Baldry said. 'It was god-awful.'

To this day, Baldry wears a bracelet bearing this inscription:

SPC Ryan P. Long USA Ranger

A CO 3/75 KIA 03 April 2003 Iraq

Back in Afghanistan, Baldry found a different country than the one he'd left 18 months earlier. Refugees had returned home. The 'bad guys' blended in even better, and the ambushes grew more frequent.

Baldry received an Army Commendation Medal for leading a counteroffensive during an ambush. A commanding officer suggested nominating Baldry for a bronze star, but Baldry declined the nomination because fellow soldiers had been wounded and he hadn't.

Upon his return from Afghanistan, Baldry made obtaining a college degree his new mission. To honor Long - and to make sure all those pass routes he ran with Meredith didn't go to waste - he also would try out for the Florida football team.

But Baldry had never played organized football.

In spring 2006, Baldry, then 23, relied on the skills Meredith and others had taught him to improvise his way through a tryout.

'Basically,' he said, 'I didn't know what to do.'

Safeties coach Doc Holliday, who evaluates Florida's walk-on hopefuls, saw a 6-6, 260-pound specimen smart enough to learn how to help Florida's starters prepare for games. If he ever saw the field during a game, that would be a bonus.

Unforgettable Sounds

Those who haven't run through the tunnel on game day at The Swamp can't comprehend the noise. When a player passes the gator head near the exit, the sound rumbles like the thunder of a distant storm. When he bursts through the opening, it envelops him. For the next few minutes, his ears throb.

'You feel larger than life,' Baldry said. 'Almost bulletproof.'

Baldry, a tight end, played for the first time last season against Western Carolina. Mostly, he slaved on the scout team, earning a national title ring and a trip to the White House, where President Bush mentioned fellow walk-on Cam Brewer - an ex-Marine - but did not mention Baldry.

This season, Baldry has earned a scholarship and a spot on the first team for field goals and extra points. He also has helped enlighten his teammates.

'You don't really sit there and think about other guys that are 18 or 19 years old giving you the opportunity to sit there and have a beer with your buddies,' senior tight end Tate Casey said. 'College people nowadays just kind of overlook all that stuff.'

The most common question teammates ask Baldry is, 'Did you kill anybody?'

Asked if he did, the usually talkative Baldry fell silent. A line had been crossed. Baldry searched for words to explain, knowing someone who hadn't taken another's life in the line of duty couldn't possibly understand.

'The second time in Afghanistan,' he said, 'I did a lot of shooting.'

A few more seconds passed, and Baldry spoke again.

'I don't regret anything I've done. A lot of times, you just play it over in your mind. I had dreams when I first came back. It'll change your life. You've got to live with that.'

Baldry doesn't intend to live only with his memories. A bumper sticker on his truck begs Americans not to forget Afghanistan.

After he receives his bachelor's degree in telecommunications in December, he could follow the path of some of his fellow former Rangers and sign on with a contracting firm that would pay big money to send him to another war zone. But Baldry doesn't fancy himself a mercenary. Instead, he might choose graduate school, which might lead to work in the intelligence community.

'I think,' he said, 'I may be able to help elsewhere.'

For the next few months, Baldry will defend Florida's kicker from those who would block field goals and extra points. He will run through that tunnel and revel in the roar that floated over his house as a boy.

Still, not a day will pass that he doesn't think of Afghanistan. Even if he doesn't return, he will never forget the noise produced by bullets, by rockets, and by the voices of men bonded to him for life.

Reporter Andy Staples can be reached

at (352) 262-3719 or astaples@

tampatrib.com.

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