Photo By Airman 1st Class Savannah Carpenter | U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Guadalupe Corona, 23d Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive...... read more read more
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MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga – There was a moment when everything was supposed to end.
The silence that followed should’ve been final, but somehow, it wasn’t. In that stillness, he was given something he hadn’t asked for: another chance. He didn’t choose to survive that day, but he chose everything that came after such as the pain, the healing and the purpose. What followed wasn’t the end of his story, but the beginning of a new one-one defined not by what tried to break him, but by everything he’d rebuilt.
“I started telling my story a few years back, because we have a serious problem with the stigma surrounding mental health,” said Master Sgt. Guadalupe “Wally” Corona, 23d Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal section chief of operations and training. “It took me a long time to reach a place where I could speak without fear, fear of judgment or consequences. As a suicide attempt survivor, still serving on active duty and doing things I once believed I couldn’t, I know my story is worth hearing. I hope others can learn from my mistakes and not let things go as far as they did for me. What brought me to that point, and what’s brought me to where I am now — it’s not just one thing. It’s an all-encompassing story.”
Corona had mastered the art of holding it together. After multiple deployments, a strained home life and the relentless pressure of leading others, he wore the uniform with pride, but behind that pride, he was quietly breaking.
His journey began in 2007, when he joined the Air Force and chose EOD, driven by a desire to help others and make a tangible difference. His first duty assignment at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, soon led to a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009. As a Senior Airman, he was tasked with responding to improvised explosives and post-blast scenes, always under the pressure of rapid response. Just two weeks after his birthday, he found himself in his first firefight, being ambushed from three sides.
“It was very intense, and it didn’t last long … but it lasted long enough,” Corona said. “The entire engagement was maybe 16 minutes. When we got back to the (forward operating base) later that day, I was met with praise. But to me, it was just the end of the mission. We had to reconstitute, clean out the truck and reload the ammo. A few hours later I was lying in my bunk, and that’s when it hit me. I had told myself I’d be okay with it. I was EOD, and I knew at some point I’d be close to the fight, but I’d never really thought about how I was going to feel about it. I kept going over the mission in my head, replaying everything, when someone suddenly banged on the door. The lights flipped on, and someone came in saying there was another call. So, I was afforded the opportunity to not have to think about it. The next mission came quickly. Then another after that.”
After returning to Germany from his first deployment, Corona began showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A conversation with a friend about seeking help showed just how strong the stigma is in the military, where needing support was often seen as a sign of weakness. He was soon reassigned to Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, where new challenges emerged as his long-term girlfriend, he had then recently married, was diagnosed with cancer, and he received orders for a second deployment. As he trained to deploy, the emotional weight of her illness, their recent marriage and his absence began to build.
Back in Afghanistan, the tempo hadn’t slowed and neither had the pressure. The missions kept coming, each one demanding focus he barely had left to give, but some routines still offered a sense of control.
Every mission started the same — prepping gear, loading up, and blasting their favorite song. The beat became a ritual, a way to steady their nerves before stepping into the unknown.
“My friends and I were at the bazaar when a group of Marines flagged us down,” Corona recalled. “Their lieutenant was talking with my team lead when an explosion went off behind us. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw this huge cloud. The team lead jumped back in the truck, and we headed straight to the site.”
At the building, dust was still falling. A shaken Marine stumbled out, yelling, “My guys are still in there.” Corona’s team lead had already gone in with the metal detector. The Marine, carrying the only other one and knowing the layout, led Corona inside.
Near the doorway was a massive blast crater and two injured Marines. They went to work immediately, stabilizing wounds, applying pressure, doing everything they could to preserve life and limb. When the Corpsman arrived, he confirmed they needed a medical evacuation.
“I backed out and double checked that I had my radio and my rifle,” Corona continued. “Once I’m in the hallway, I call in a nine-line MEDEVAC and give my first five lines using my quick card. As soon as I finished, it hit me. I’d been hearing a noise this whole time, and the moment I turned around, I knew what it was. It was the whine of the metal detector. It was that first Marine, the one who cleared us through. Before I could even process what was happening, he took a knee and started to dig. I remember putting my radio back and starting towards him to get him to stop… and it went off. I took most of the blast and crashed straight through an interior wall. Unfortunately, it also killed that Marine.”
When Corona returned from his second deployment, the weight of war followed him home. He was battling a traumatic brain injury, hearing loss and the emotional toll of combat tours. His marriage was straining under pressure, and though he sought help through mental health services, he held back the full truth.
In January 2012, the Air Force EOD lost an entire three-man team, Team Tripwire. One of them, Senior Airman Bryan Bell, had graduated tech school with Corona.
“He was a close friend, and losing him hit me hard,” Corona said. “At the EOD memorial that year, I heard name after name read aloud. There were names I recognized as they were names of friends and family. I realized I couldn’t keep it together anymore.”
Serving as a senior airman through consecutive combat deployments, Corona’s valor was acknowledged through many accolades. However, awards stopped coming as failed physical fitness tests and disciplinary issues began piling up.
In 2013, feeling isolated and hitting what felt like rock bottom, Corona attempted suicide. He survived and returned to work the following Monday, wearing the same mask he’d learned to put on for therapy sessions, for his wife, and for everyone around him.
“One weekend, I was drinking to numb it all, and it hit me,” he continued. “You stop seeing the positives and only see your failures. I felt like I’d failed as a man because others had gone through the same things and seemed fine. I’d failed as an Airman because I couldn’t pass a physical fitness test and was on the verge of being removed from the Air Force. I’d failed as a husband because my marriage was falling apart. And I’d failed as a friend because my EOD brothers were deploying and dying. I truly believed I was doing everyone a favor by not exposing them to me anymore.”
In the months that followed, convinced he was already on his way out of the Air Force, Corona felt he had nothing left to lose. In a moment of raw honesty with a mental health officer, the mask cracked. That single conversation sparked a series of events that would eventually pull him back from the edge.
“I scraped by convincing everyone that I was okay,” Corona said. “I was about to fail another physical fitness test, and in my head, I’d already lost my career. I kept thinking, what’s the point anyway? Then, in a strange moment of clarity, I told myself ‘If I’m already losing my career, what do I have to lose?’. Nothing else could take it from me, so I went to my mental health appointment and told them everything and I even told them that I had attempted suicide.”
Corona went on to explain what happened next. The doctor looked at him and chuckled, not out of mockery but because he could see Corona was finally being honest with himself. The doctor had always known he was struggling, but until Corona took accountability and opened up, there was no way forward. After a moment, the officer said, “Great, now we can start to work on this. Now we can begin to fix things.”
The officer recommended that Corona attend intensive outpatient therapy at Emerald Coast Behavioral Unit. However, the sessions didn’t go as planned. After a difficult incident and feeling he wasn’t ready to fully open up, Corona was admitted into the inpatient facility instead. For 39 days, he received treatment for PTSD, processed the pain of receiving divorce papers, and began to confront the issues that had been breaking him down.
“Emerald Coast saved my life,” Corona said. “That place changed me. It forced me to close every window and door and face the person I hated most — myself. I had to confront all the things I hadn’t been processing. I was so locked into my way of thinking that every traumatic event such as the explosion and the Marine’s death had become ingrained in my head as my fault. There, I found the chink in my armor. Looking at it in its totality, I realized that maybe only five percent of the situation had ever been in my control. Once I learned to see it that way, I realized there was a little less of me that needed to feel so guilty.”
During those 39 days, he was regularly visited by Mike Mack, an Air Force Wounded Warrior Program recovery care coordinator, who helped him plan his next steps and was a key part in his reintegration. When Mack asked, “Do you still want to be in the Air Force?” Corona was stunned. He believed there was no way he’d be allowed to stay on active duty, but he simply replied, “Well, let’s try.”
That moment became a turning point not just in Corona’s career, but in his life. Against all odds, he didn’t just recover — he rose. Thanks to the unwavering support of the staff at Emerald Coast, the empathy and understanding shown by his leadership at the time, and the pivotal role Mack played in his reintegration, Corona was able to reclaim his path.
He remained active duty, steadily worked his way back to doing what he loved, earned promotions, and even deployed again. He found love, remarried and became a father of two.
Today, Corona is more than a survivor. He's living proof that healing is possible, and that being broken doesn’t mean being finished. He became an anomaly: a wounded warrior who stayed in the fight, shattered stigma and redefined what it meant to be resilient.
“Resilience is a level of acceptance for me,” Corona said. “Things are going to get bad. At some point, something is going to happen, but it’s never going to make me think worse of myself or hurt myself again. I have too much in the plus column for anything bad to override that. Resilience, to me, is the ability to find a different perspective.”
Corona ends his testimony every time by offering three calls to action: empathy in leadership, ownership of seeking help and knowing who to call for support.
“It has been a rollercoaster, but it has been a great life,” Corona said. “I have my three things. These are my calls to action. My first one is that, at some point, everyone needs to understand that a little empathy goes a long way. If I didn’t have the chief or commander that I had at that moment in time, I would not still be in the military. They put themselves in my shoes and they were the leaders I needed. Be the leader you would want.
“My second one is ownership,” he continued. “At some point, you have to own yourself. You have to own the fact that if you need help, then you’ll actually go and get it. If I didn’t have to test how far my rock bottom was, things would’ve been easier, but at the same time, I have a great family and a great life, and I wouldn’t have that if I didn’t go down that far. I had to own it, and I had to come to terms with myself."
“My third one is to know who your somebody is,” he added. “I think of it like this: you’re issued a new piece of equipment, you grab it, put it on a shelf and let it sit there. Right before you deploy, you toss it into your ruck. Then, two months into the deployment, things go wrong, you take this piece of equipment out and try to use it. We just don’t do that, so why don’t we apply that logic to our lives? On the night I attempted suicide, I scrolled through my entire contact list and didn’t call a single one of them. At that moment, that wasn’t the time I should have been thinking, ‘Who am I going to call?’ because you’ll always think of a reason not to call. Think about it now and be that someone for somebody.”
That lesson of knowing who to call and not waiting until it’s too late is what drives Corona to speak out today. By sharing his own darkest moment, he hopes to give others a roadmap through theirs.
“I started telling my story because suicide is a real problem, and it will continue to be until we can talk about it,” Corona said. “Do what you can, be there for each other, and please don’t let it go as far as I did. I want people to learn from my mistakes. We can find companionship and support because we all struggle, and everyone’s rock bottom looks different. Don’t compare yourself to others. Take from my story that you can get help, and you can be okay. Telling my story is healing for me. It gives me purpose. I want to be there for others, to be supportive, and I want people to learn from what I went through.”
In telling his story, Corona continues his mission not just to defuse bombs, but to dismantle the silence that nearly took his life, standing today not only as a warrior, but as a voice for those still searching for theirs.
| Date Taken: | 11.24.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 11.24.2025 12:50 |
| Story ID: | 552227 |
| Location: | MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 96 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Beyond the battlefield: The story of MSgt Guadalupe Corona, by A1C Savannah Carpenter, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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