Flying amid the darkness in a Blackhawk helicopter above the Iraqi desert, Tim Spriggs was praying.

He had been trained for what he was about to do, but is a person ever really ready for war?

“I was praying that I would see my family again,” said Spriggs, a freshman middle linebacker at Shorter College who spent four years in the Air Force after graduating from Armuchee.

“It was pure darkness and the circumstances made it that much darker.”

In 2002, Staff Sgt. Spriggs and a group of Army Rangers had been sent deep into Iraq to rescue a pair of downed pilots.

He was one of a select number of Air Force personnel given the opportunity to train and become Army Ranger qualified.

Days before the mission, they had been summoned from their base in Kunsan, Korea, and told only that they were going to Iraq.

“When they first told me, they gave me time to pack my bags,” Spriggs said. “I told my parents I was going to Iraq and that I didn’t know how long I was going to be gone or when I was coming back.”

Once the crew arrived in Iraq they were told they would be leaving on a 72-hour mission to retrieve the pilots.

Later in the air, when the only sound was that of the helicopter blades swirling intermittently, Spriggs and his comrades had no idea what awaited them.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Spriggs said. “I never thought I would see action. And all those guys on the helicopter were looking at each other like there was no turning back.”

“We had to respond”

Over the next 60 hours the Rangers trekked through the sands of Iraq looking for their two countrymen who had vanished into the darkness like pebbles into a well.

“We had a rendezvous point and a general idea of where the pilots were,” Spriggs said. “It was just a lot of movement. It took us 60 hours to find the pilots so we had to hump it back to the rendezvous point.”

Though Spriggs didn’t wish to recount the details of the mission, he did say that the team engaged the enemy in a firefight and some men, including Americans, were killed.

“Looking back at it, it’s a lot more frightening,” Spriggs said. “I wasn’t scared then. It happened and we had to respond to it.”

Over time the immediate impact of the events of that 60-hour work week in the desert began waning.

But remembering those who fell in the line of duty will never leave, Spriggs said.

A new start

On the first day of practice this season, Spriggs sat propped up on the slope of a hill with his head resting on his football helmet in the shade.

For a former military man, the simple things seem to be the most cherished when they are gone.

There are no pitchers of homemade sweet tea or billowing maple trees or the companionship of a pretty blonde coed on the front lines.

There is only sand and sadness.

But for Spriggs, sitting amongst his teammates sharing a laugh, Iraq was clearly more than the 6,000 miles away that a map might say it was.

“It’s really cool being here,” Spriggs said. “I can’t believe I am this much older (22) than everybody. But I look at it as a chance to be a leader out there. A lot of guys have said they look up to me. And that’s an honor.”

After an honorable discharge from the Air Force at the beginning of 2004, Spriggs decided it was time to go on with his life.

He couldn’t change the past and didn’t want to. Saving those pilots was the most honorable thing he had ever done, he said.

But he now had some things he wanted to do on his own and football was on that list.

“I had to get back in shape because I took some time off,” Spriggs said. “I don’t think you can ever be in good enough shape, because this heat will get anybody.”

Spriggs enrolled at Shorter not expecting to be given much of anything from the coaches.

They hadn’t scouted him out of high school and he was 22 years old, for crying out loud, an eternity removed from prep football.

“When I first mentioned it to coach (Phil) Jones, I was leery about it,” Spriggs said. “I didn’t know if he would give a look at somebody older. But when he told me about the scholarship money I would get, it was a dream come true.”

So now in the cafeteria at Shorter during lunch, it would be hard to pick the staff sergeant out of the flock of Hawks scarfing down thousands of calories after practice.

Spriggs always seems to smile and his eyes light up when he talks about the good things, like getting an education and playing football.

It’s also meaningful to Spriggs to be playing with his old high school teammate Tommy Oswald, who also served in the military.

They once talked about playing college football together, but after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks both heard the call of their country.

“This is our second chance together,” Spriggs said.

Standing beside Oswald and his teammates when the Hawks open the season Sept. 10 against visiting Webber International, Spriggs will be ready for the battle