Chris Galvan’s paratrooper past leads to a new life at UCF

Though the moment occurred in a flash, the memory of Chris Galvan's parachute deployment into Iraq is still as fresh as the second he hit the ground.

March 26, 2003.

A strange tension ran through the plane. Each member on board waited for the mission to be called off. After all, a paratrooper combat mission hadn't occurred since 1989. Suddenly everything went dark, yet an eerie shade of red lingered. The silence finally broke when the captain's voice ominously echoed over the loudspeaker, sounding out the phrase uttered in many a war flick.

"Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em," said the captain.

Twenty minutes later, a green light flashed and Galvan followed 18 other soldiers on a 1,000-foot descent into combat.

"Gone was the nervous excitement and in was the worry for my men," Galvan said. "In all my years of combat, I've rarely thought about my personal safety but obsessed over that of my men. All that went through my mind was ‘Do they know where the assembly area is?, Do they remember the distance and direction of the first objective?, Did I do everything in my power to prepare them for this?' "

An experienced member of the 173rd Airborne Division of the United States Army, Galvan was responsible for nine troops as squad leader of a quick reaction force.

But no level of experience braced Galvan for what he was landing in the middle of.

"By the time we responded, we were facing 300 Taliban and were pretty much surrounded the whole day," he said. "We were tasked with clearing an orchard in the valley when we were ambushed. My alpha team leader lost his leg, and I was wounded by a grenade. We evacuated him, and I stayed to fight. We ended up killing over 100 Taliban and wounded about the same."

Galvan, now 29 and a third-year student at UCF, earned both the Purple Heart, the military honor awarded to those who were wounded in combat, and the bronze star for his valor. Branded with the names of his fallen friends on his left arm to remind him of all he's been through, he now seeks to lead by example in the school's Army ROTC program.

Born to be a military man

While his accomplishments show a strong dedication to obedience and discipline, Galvan originally associated himself with the wrong crowd in high school.

He grew up 20 minutes west of Cleveland, attending Lorain Admiral King High School. Friends that he had known for years tried to drag Galvan in the middle of harm's way.

"Gangs, drugs, petty crime. The usual," he said.

Galvan and the rest were all arrested for vandalism. He began to watch each one of his friends get into fights and drop out of school.

He desperately sought a way of avoiding the downward spiral. His outlet: the school's Navy Junior Reserves Officers Training Corps, or NJROTC, program.

He felt as though he had been born to become a soldier. Both of Galvan's grandfathers fought in World War II, one in Europe and the other in the Pacific. He lost an uncle in the Vietnam War while two others served at the same time. He also has several cousins who have military experience.

However, the family history did not make the decision any easier on his mother.

"I did a lot of crying and soul searching," Patricia Galvan said. "I prayed that he would be trained well enough to take care of himself, but I was really happy for him. I was so proud that he went head first into the right decision."

While he thought for some time that the Navy was where his heart lied, he started to feel differently. He did not like the idea of the Navy choosing his career path among his top three choices.

But, one visual alone ignited Galvan's passion toward the Army.

"What changed my mind was when I saw a video of a bunch of paratroopers jumping out of planes and kicking some ass," he said with a sense of pride.

Just eight days after graduating high school, Galvan left Cleveland for basic training and airborne school. He would spend the next eight years in active service, starting with his deployment to Kosovo in 1999, right at the height of Serbian ethnic cleansing.

Serbians, under the command of Slobodan Milosevic, mutilated neighboring Albanians when Serbia seized control of the Kosovo region in the late 1980s.

"I was a young private arriving in the small town of Vitina and remember going into the town and having a 70-year-old man fall to his knees, weep and kiss our feet from the mere sight of Americans there to help," Galvan said. "It was both humbling and served a great deal of humility to all of us. It made me realize how blessed we have it and how bad it could get."

After participating in the Multinational Force and Observers in Egypt, Galvan was reassigned to Iraq in 2003 and again to Afghanistan in 2005. The conditions were like nothing he had ever experienced before. Scorching summer temperatures in the desert coupled with frigid winter lows in the mountains. As if that were not enough, he carried equipment the weight of a small child at all times.

He also endured the toughest combat situations of his life, claiming that the Taliban boasted extraordinary fighting skill.

"In the ‘Stan as we call it, you're always outnumbered and fighting an uphill battle, literally," he said.

Hitting the books

After eight years of dodging bullets and living each day like it was his last, Galvan finally returned home and decided to pursue an education.

In 2006, he enrolled at Valencia Community College and transferred to UCF.

He takes part in the school's Army ROTC program, serving as both a student and a mentor.

"When he speaks, people listen," said Wellington Sturrup,23, a second lieutenant and cadet in ROTC. "People want to know how things are really done in the Army. He's a big presence in the battalion."

Alongside his work within the ROTC program, Galvan was named the vice president of the Student Veterans Association and the junior vice commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 316 in Deltona, Fla.