By Ryan Tipps
D3sports.com

The gunfire came out of almost nowhere.

With his fellow soldiers, Rodney Beasley, scouting an area near Tal Afar, Iraq, tried quickly to find cover on the ground – but he wasn’t quite quick enough. An insurgent sniper found his target, sending a bullet searing through Beasley’s right shoulder and emerging only to also strike the soldier’s left side.

As he winced from the pain, the tragedy of the moment was compounded by the fact that this day in January 2005 was his wife’s birthday. Perhaps luckiest of all was that the bullet missed his spine.

For the soldier from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, it was the second time he had nearly become one of the more than 4,200 U.S. troop fatalities in Iraq. And that fact didn’t go unnoticed by the military, which twice bestowed the Greensboro running back with the Purple Heart. The decoration is for those who have been wounded or killed during service.

Rodney Beasley has taken much more painful hits than he'll ever receive on the football field. Greensboro athletics photo

“You think a little bit about how lucky or blessed you are,” Beasley said, “and really the only thing I was thinking about was that I’m still here, and I’m going to finish this tour and get back home.”

Over the course of three and a half years of military service, Beasley put in three tours in Iraq, leaving more than 6,000 miles behind his wife, Stephanie, who was pregnant with his daughter, Malaya, during the last tour.

The Condor, N.C., native followed in the footsteps of his older brother and sister in joining the military. He considered college after high school, but with his siblings’ encouragement, he chose to carve a path in the armed forces, becoming an infantryman shipped off to one of the Mideast’s most hostile environments. He was on the front lines, where patrols and kicking in doors were part of daily life.

In an encounter that would lead him to one of his Purple Heart awards, he became indoctrinated to the latest violence in Iraq shortly after arriving for his second tour in the first week of 2005.

“On the first day out to our base that we were going to set up, we got ambushed, and I was in the rear of the formation,” Beasley recalled. “I got nicked in the ear. It wasn’t a life or death injury, but they had me sit down and ... talk with people about how if it had been an inch left or right, it would be a different story.”

For soldiers trained in live-fire exercises, Beasley remembers his response to the wound as being more of anger than of shock. Even now, knowing that the situation didn’t play out as grimly as it could have, he and his family can find humor – and perhaps some relief – in it.

“Me and my wife actually have a joke,” Beasley noted. “She says I bobbed when I should have weaved.”

The shoulder wounds he would suffer later that same tour carried more weight for the soldier. He had to be hospitalized for several weeks, and doctors monitored him closely for any possible spinal injuries.

He finally recovered and returned to the United States, where he was awarded a Purple Heart with an oak-leaf cluster, which signifies earning the honor multiple times. Though a unit’s general typically presents this kind of award, President Bush happened to be near the base at Fort Bragg, N.C., and gave Beasley and his fellow recipients their hero’s honor.

Still, Beasley had to go back to Iraq for a third time – back to the risks, back to an Iraqi people that weren’t always happy to have an American presence around. Being wounded a second time, much more intensely than the first, was jarring for Beasley.

“For the third tour, after I had been shot, and I couldn’t bring myself to actually go out of the [fortified Green Zone]. I was supposed to, but I just couldn’t do it,” he said. “For one, I had a daughter on the way … and I didn’t want to put myself in that opportunity to be shot again.

“It was a third-strike-you’re-out type of deal.”

What ultimately emerged from Iraq was a man who no longer resembled the party-driven teenager of a few years before. Maturity had set in. “When I came back, I had my head on my shoulders a whole lot differently,” he said.

Beasley, who left as a sergeant, began hunting for a college after his military service ended. His wife had been studying at UNC-Greensboro, but the fit there wasn’t right for him. It was the same story with North Carolina A&T. But the much smaller Greensboro College drew him closer.

That leads him to today, where the 25-year-old junior has averaged 3.5 yards per carry as a running back this season and over 27 yards per kick return. His newly apparent maturity can’t temper his excitement about the upcoming football season for the Pride, which boasts more balance on offense and more endurance, as well as a new man at the helm.

“I really think Coach [Randy] Hunt came in and made everything about this being our year to change everything around.”

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