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Woodside’s man of steel!

Outnumbered 20-1 and out of ammo: NY soldier on third tour in Afghanistan has seen war at its worst

FORWARD OPERATING BASE AIRBORNE, Afghanistan — Staff Sgt. Danny Acevedo keeps soldiers flying in the skies of Afghanistan — a crucial job in a war zone where roadside bombs are the biggest enemy.

Acevedo, 26, of Woodside, Queens, is on his third tour in Afghanistan with the upstate Fort Drum-based 10th Mountain Division, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment in Wardak Province.

“I’m pretty much a travel agent for 2-87,” he said, laughing.

Just a few months ago, Acevedo was an infantryman with Alpha Company. He spent the first part of his year-long deployment building a remote outpost in the treacherous Tangi Valley. “It’s an IED-infested area,” he said.

In June, just six months into his tour, his truck was hit with an improvised explosive device so big it blew a 6-foot-by-6-foot crater in the ground. “Thank God no one was hurt,” he said.

It wasn’t Acevedo’s only brush with death here.

In his second deployment with the 10th Mountain Division in 2006, Acevedo was manning a tiny outpost atop a mountain in Paktika Province with five other soldiers when insurgents ambushed them.

“We took on over 100 guys,” he said. “I really thought I was going to die. We went black on ammo. We used (hand grenades), that was our last defense. And we could still hear their voices. It was a four-hour intense firefight. A grenade landed 2 feet from our bunker. Luckily the jackass forgot to pull the pin.”

Now Acevedo spends his days here coordinating flights for soldiers — a much safer job that surely put his parents’ fears at ease.

“He’s a good boy and a hell of a soldier. I couldn’t be prouder,” boasted dad Richard Acevedo, 64, a parking attendant.

“Every day I think about him over there. Sometimes I visualize that he’s in action, up against a big unit, and he wants to take it on himself. It worries me. I pray every day nothing happens to him.”

For the rest of the story, click on the following: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/09/18/2009-09-18_queens_soldiers_flies_above_afghanistan_after_surviving_deadly_ground_combat.html#ixzz0RUNQSPN4