Freedom Remembered

Born Dec. 8, 1990 in Louisiana

Died Aug. 27, 2009 in Afghanistan

Pfc. Matthew E. Wildes of Hammond, La., attended Hammond High School, and joined the Army at the age of 17 in April of 2008. His parents tried to talk him out of enlisting, but Matt was determined, completing his GED so he could enlist. He took basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and halfway through basic training, was sent home with stress fractures in his legs. He spent his month of recovery anxious to get back and disappointed he wouldn’t be graduating with the soldiers he started with. He arrived at Fort Carson, Colorado, in October of 2008, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. He deployed to Afghanistan on May 24, 2009, and as one of the youngest soldiers in his group, he quickly became a favorite with his can-do attitude. loyalty and courage. The older soldiers saw it their duty to watch over Matt. The squad was very close, and Matt got his mother to send them special bandanas to wear. They posed in a photo to send her. Matt died at the age of 18 on August 27 of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device while he was on a volunteer mission. Matt left the following quote on his myspace page, “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter. – Ernest Hemingway.”

The PFC Matthew E. Wildes by Freedom Remembered, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.