MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Station members held a formation at the parade deck in front of Building 1 here Oct. 28 to recognize and award a local Marine for his bravery.
Sgt. Travis Goodwin, station runway supervisor, was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism displayed while saving the lives of two people during his tour of duty in Pensacola, Fla.
“It’s not every day we get the opportunity to recognize a Marine,” said Lt. Col. Michael Coletta, Headquarters & Headquarters Squadron commanding officer. “It’s a very special award.”
The Navy and Marine Corps Medal is the second highest noncombat award given for heroism to Navy and Marine Corps service members.
The medal is awarded to service members who display heroism by saving the life of another while risking their own life during a non-combative situation.
Coletta said he believes every Marine who was present at the formation would do what Goodwin did. Goodwin saved the lives of two women during a head on collision nearly a year ago.
“I take no credit for it,” said Goodwin. “I give it to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps taught me, and I’m able to perform because of the Marine Corps.”
During the traffic accident, Goodwin placed his own life in danger to pull the women out of their vehicles, which were on fire and in danger of exploding.
“I think he’s really brave, and I‘m proud of him,” said Keely Goodwin, Travis Goodwin’s wife of five years. “I don‘t know if I would have been able to think and react as quickly (as he did).”
It was 7 a.m. with clear blue skies and a cool breeze on March 19, 2009, when Goodwin decided to go into work earlier than he usually did.
Goodwin was an instructor at an expeditionary airfield school in Pensacola, Fla. A class had just graduated and he expected it to be a slow workday as he drove on Blue Angel Parkway.
Goodwin was driving his pickup truck when he saw the vehicle in front of him swerve.
He swerved a little to the opposite side when he saw a car coming head on toward him.
Quickly reacting, Goodwin jerked his wheel and forced his truck into a sideways sliding motion down the road.
As his vehicle slid down the road, Goodwin saw a head on collision between a Cadillac CTS and a Nissan Sentra.
Both vehicles were traveling at approximately 55 to 65 mph toward each other. The impact caused the vehicles to lift up in midair and land horizontally on the road, stopping traffic.
A Dodge Neon was unable to stop and T-boned the Cadillac, causing an explosion and a fire.
After Goodwin’s truck finally came to a stop nearly 150 feet from the accident, he rushed out to help.
“Everyone else was so worried about getting to work that nobody was doing anything,” said Goodwin. “They were just going around the vehicles.”
Goodwin quickly analyzed the situation and saw three vehicles and four people involved in the accident. He saw the Cadillac was on fire and a woman, bloody and with several compound leg fractures, trapped inside.
Goodwin rushed over to pull her out first before the vehicle could explode.
Bystanders screamed out, “The car is on fire, the car is on fire,” as Goodwin pulled her out through the passenger side.
After carrying her to safety and leaving someone to look after her, he returned to the collision.
Goodwin ran to the Dodge Neon and saw an unconscious woman in the driver’s seat and her uninjured, conscious daughter in the passenger side.
After checking her pulse and breathing, he struggled to pull the woman out.
“The (Cadillac) engine, was, no joke, right behind me on fire,” said Goodwin. “It was hot, really hot. As soon as I got (her) out, somebody finally stopped by with a fire extinguisher and was able to put the fire out.”
After pulling the woman out and leaving her daughter with her, Goodwin ran to the Nissan Sentra to see what he could do.
“I couldn’t do anything for her,” said Goodwin. “It was the worst feeling I ever had, because I was like, ‘Man what do I do for this lady.’”
He saw a woman in the driver’s seat severely injured, bleeding from her head, but alive with the car engine in her lap.
After leaving someone behind to keep the woman in the Nissan Sentra calm, Goodwin returned to the unconscious women he pulled out from the Dodge Neon.
He attempted to calm the woman’s 20-year-old daughter as he began to resuscitate the unconscious woman.
Goodwin fell back on the training he received as a Marine recruit to help the unconscious woman.
“I’m not an (emergency medical technician); I’m not a paramedic. I’m a Marine,” said Goodwin. “In boot camp we learn the basic stuff — how to apply pressure, how to check for certain things. I’d been in the Marine Corps for six years and I hadn’t used this stuff in six years.”
Goodwin stayed with the woman, attempting to help her with his training until the paramedics arrived. All four women survived the collision, two of them because of what Goodwin did.
Throughout the whole two-minute ordeal, Goodwin had no thought in mind but to help. It wasn’t until he was giving his statement to the state troopers that Goodwin thought about what he did.
“It was then that I realized ‘Holy crap, what did you just do, what just happened?’” said Goodwin. “Instincts, it just happened. When I had to write my statement out, I started shaking and started (thinking) ‘Oh my God, how did this just happen?’”
After the scene was cleared and the women were taken away, Goodwin headed straight to work.
Word of what Goodwin had done began to spread at his work section, even though he downplayed his involvement in the whole thing.
Warrant Officer Scott Nickson, expeditionary air field recovery officer-incharge here, was serving with Goodwin in Pensacola at the time.
“At first, he didn‘t say much about it and then we heard secondhand about what he had actually done,” said Nickson. “He was pretty modest about it, actually.”
Several of the state troopers who arrived at the scene of the collision wrote letters to Goodwin’s command informing them of what he did.
“What he did was inspiring and, bottomline, heroic,” said Nickson. “He could have injured himself. The situation could have been much worse.”
Time passed after the collision and Goodwin slowly began to lose touch with the women whose lives he had saved.
Though still modest about what he did, giving credit to the Marine Corps for training him, Goodwin stood at the parade deck to receive an award that speaks volumes about his bravery.