Sgt. Maj. Christopher Nelms was twice awarded the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for valor, during a 28-year Army career.
WASHINGTON — A highly decorated soldier from the Army’s elite Delta Force died last month after a free-fall parachute training accident t he military did not make public.
Sgt. Maj. Christopher Nelms, 46, died July 1 from injuries sustained when his parachute failed to fully open during a June 27 jump at Laurinburg-Maxton Airport, N. C., about 40 miles southwest of Delta’s home post of Fort Bragg, N. C. “He was fighting it the whole way down,” said a former Delta Force officer familiar with the accident.
U. S. Army Special Operations Command, which exercises administrative control of Delta Force, did not announce Nelms’s death, but confirmed it when contacted by Yahoo News. “One service member died as a result of a free-fall training incident on June 27,2018, in Laurinburg, N. C.,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt, the command spokesman, in an email response to questions from Yahoo News. Nelms “ received initial medical treatment for his injuries but unfortunately died at the hospital.”
Nelms was buried in Arlington Cemetery on July 31, Bockholt said.
Special mission units like Delta and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 have found themselves at the forefront of the military’s post-9/11 campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa and Yemen, a n uncomfortable starring role for troops who prefer to work in the shadows. That sometimes leads to a tension between the special operators’ preference for utmost secrecy and the public’s right to know what its military is doing.
“We don’t make it a habit to just announce every time somebody dies,” Bockholt replied, when asked why his command had made no public mention of Nelms’s death.
The military also typically does not identify soldiers as belonging to Delta, a secret unit whose full name is 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta. Bockholt would say only that Nelms was assigned to U. S. Army Special Operations Command. T wo former Delta operators confirmed to Yahoo News that Nelms was a member of the unit.
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Inside the world of US military medics
MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 29: U. S. Army flight medic SGT Tyrone Jordan (C) of Charlotte, North Carolina and crew chief SGT Charles Winscott of Columbia, Missouri (L) from Dustoff Task Force Shadow of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade gives first aid to a prisoner after he was shot by Marines during a morning firefight while Marine LCpl. Kristopher Brown of Fayetteville, North Carolina provides security aboard a MEDEVAC helicopter September 29,2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. Task Force Shadow is responsible for evacuating wounded Afghani and Coalition forces as well as local nationals throughout southern Afghanistan. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – MARCH 19: Afghan soldiers (L) speak to a local Afghan, while a medic in the U. S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, Charlie Company (R) monitors a soldier who has just survived a blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) while driving a vehicle during a mission near Command Outpost Pa’in Kalay, on March 19,2013 in Kandahar Province, Maiwand District, Afghanistan. The soldier suffered a concussion and a sore arm from the blast. The United States military and its allies are in the midst of training and transitioning power to the Afghan National Security Forces in order to withdraw from the country by 2014. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 24: U. S. Army flight medic SGT Tyrone Jordan of Charlotte, NC attached to Dustoff Task Force Shadow of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade surveys the area for a wounded Marine after jumping out of a MEDEVAC helicopter September 24,2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. Two Marines were wounded at the location by an improvised explosive device (IED). Task Force Shadow is responsible for evacuating wounded Afghani and Coalition forces as well as local nationals throughout southern Afghanistan. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
US flight medic sergeant Megan Ford from US Army’s Task Force Lift ‘Dust Off’, Charlie Company 1-171 Aviation regiment runs to the medevac helicopter to fly on a mission to airlift a severely wounded elderly Afghan man who was shot in the face in Helmand province on November 6,2011. The United Nations says the number of civilians killed in the Afghanistan war in the first half of this year rose 15 percent to 1,462, with insurgents behind 80 percent. AFP PHOTO/BEHROUZ MEHRI (Photo credit should read BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)
US military medics treat a mock victim in a tent during a joint medical evacuatioin exercise as part of the annual massive military exercises, known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, at a South Korean Army hospital in Goyang, northwest of Seoul, on March 15,2017.
South Korea and the United States kicked off their annual, massive military exercises on March 1 as North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un ordered his troops to prepare for a ‘merciless strike’ against the enemy forces. / AFP PHOTO / JUNG Yeon-Je (Photo credit should read JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – MARCH 19: A medic in the U. S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, Charlie Company (R) tends to a soldier who has just survived a blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) while driving a vehicle during a mission near Command Outpost Pa’in Kalay, on March 19,2013 in Kandahar Province, Maiwand District, Afghanistan. The soldier suffered a concussion from the blast. The United States military and its allies are in the midst of training and transitioning power to the Afghan National Security Forces in order to withdraw from the country by 2014. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
BAGHRAM AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 10: U. S. Army medics load an injured American soldier onto an Air Force jet for evacuation to Landstuhl, Germany on September 10,2005 from Baghram Air Field, Afghanistan. American casualties in Afghanistan are first treated in the field, then usually moved to the combat hospital in Baghram for further treatment before then being evacuated on flights to Germany and then the United States. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
BANDA ACEH, INDONESIA: A US medic (L) waits to board a US Seahawk helicopter as other soldiers to load relief goods into the helicopter en route for a relief mission in the remote areas of the Aceh province at the military airport in Banda Aceh, 14 January 2005. The United Nations urged Indonesia not to impose a deadline on foreign troops providing relief assistance in tsunami-hit Aceh province, while the US President George W. Bush predicted that US aid would help defeat Islamic extremists. The armed forces of Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States all rushed units to Aceh in the wake of the December 26 tsunami disaster which killed more than 110,000 Indonesians out of a total of over 163,000 deaths around Asia. AFP PHOTO/Jewel SAMAD (Photo credit should read JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
402462 10: United States and Canadian Army medics render first aid to an American soldier, who fainted due to altitude sickness, during search and destroy operations against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters March 15,2002 in the rugged Shah-e-Kot mountains, 25 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Gardez, Afghanistan. Hundreds of American and Canadian troops were lifted into the mountainous region at high altitude to search for and destroy any enemy they encounter. (Pool Photo/Getty Images)
MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 30: Members of the medical staff at the 31st Combat Support Hospital (CSH) remove Nawa District Governor Abdul Manaf from a MEDEVAC helicopter after he was airlifted to the hospital suffering from chest pains September 30,2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. The 31st CSH is responsible for treating wounded Afghani and Coalition forces as well as local nationals in Helmand Province. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 29: U. S. Army flight medic SGT Tyrone Jordan (R) of Charlotte, NC of Dustoff Task Force Shadow of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade helps Marines carry a wounded Afghani man to a MEDEVAC helicopter September 29,2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. The man had been shot by the Marines during a morning firefight. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
MARJA, AFGHANISTAN – SEPTEMBER 29: U. S. Army flight medic SGT Tyrone Jordan (C) of Charlotte, North Carolina, from Dustoff Task Force Shadow from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade gives first aid to a prisoner after he was shot by Marines during a morning firefight as Marine LCpl. Kristopher Brown of Fayetteville, North Carolina guards him aboard a MEDEVAC helicopter September 29,2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. Task Force Shadow is responsible for evacuating wounded Afghani and Coalition forces as well as local nationals throughout southern Afghanistan.
