thedrifter
07-28-07, 06:51 AM
Troops honored for their mettle
The men served in Iraq, Afghanistan
Jay Price, Staff Writer
On Friday, an Air Force pilot stationed at Pope Air Force Base received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the dramatic rescue of an American service member in Afghanistan. Monday, a sergeant from Camp Lejeune will be awarded the Bronze Star for leading his troops during a ferocious attack on their tiny outpost in Iraq's Anbar Province. Here are their stories.
It was late morning when a couple of mortar rounds fell near the little base. Then it was quiet again.
Mortar attacks were common, mostly just to harass the Marines. They were in Anbar province, just east of the city of Fallujah, after all. This time, though, something just seemed wrong, thought 1st Sgt. Paul T. Archie, a heavily muscled weight lifter with the raspy voice of a drill sergeant, which he had once been.
And then there was something else, just an extra sense you get after multiple combat tours in Iraq.
Weapons Company of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines had shipped out of Camp Lejeune at the beginning of August 2006 with 191 men. As the top enlisted man, Archie wanted to bring all of them back alive. The odds were against that. In Anbar, it had become routine for infantry companies to lose several Marines during a standard sixth-month tour.
The company's perfect record didn't last long. On Aug. 23, a sniper crept close to a group of Marines guarding a gas station and fired. Lance Cpl. James Hirlston, 21, fell, blood welling from his neck. Hirlston, a former high school wrestler from Murfreesboro, Tenn., left behind a crowd of survivors, including eight siblings.
Every day after that, including the day the mortar rounds fell, Archie reminded his men about Hirlston, about how they were fighting not just for their country but also their fallen buddy.
After the mortar rounds hit, Archie and the other leaders sent reinforcements up into the six rooftop guard posts and others in armored Humvees to protect the roads leading to the base. Two hours later a dump truck roared toward the base. The Marines in the Humvees opened up with a machine gun, and the truck veered off the road and exploded. Then enemy fighters all around the base fired AK-47s and rocket launchers, and mortar shells began falling again.
Archie and company commander 1st Lt. Scott Burlison scrambled from position to position, one at a time, so that if one was shot someone would know. Getting shot was more than a possibility: That day they were exposed to thousands of incoming rounds.
Archie said his job was mainly encouraging the men to "fight like dogs." He also was checking their ammunition supply as he moved around and made sure they identified their targets so no civilians were shot, a key part of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.
Two Marines were wounded; each time Archie rushed to check on them, Hirlston was in the back of his mind. Both lived.
When the shooting stopped, the Marines piped up with their all-purpose word, hoorah. "We did it, first sergeant, we did it," said several. Archie let them celebrate, then reminded them they needed to focus again because that next patrol, that next ambush, they needed to be ready.
The fight had lasted maybe an hour. The next day, they counted up their remaining ammunition. They had fired more than 10,000 rounds.
A medal wasn't what the job was about, Archie said. It was about getting his Marines home. All but one of them made it.
* * *
The pilots and crews of the attack jets and helicopters had carefully planned the rescue attempt. But once they reached the rugged part of Afghanistan where the missing American was supposed to be hiding in a small village, things started going wrong, as they often do in war.
It was a moonless night, and low clouds obscured the spot where the Black Hawk chopper was supposed to set down. Then an equipment failure on the lead A-10 attack plane kept it from firing its guns or dropping bombs.
Capt. Keith M. Wolak, in another A-10, was supposed to be the mission coordinator. Now, though, the 35-year-old Seattle native would have to make attack runs while simultaneously coordinating 17 aircraft packed into a tight space over the rescue area.
Wolak said Friday he made several attack runs, mainly against fortified fighting positions on the mountainsides around the landing zone. The idea was to knock out heavy weapons that could be used against the chopper designated to pick up the serviceman.
But if the Black Hawk crew couldn't figure out where to land, it wouldn't matter. The crew radioed that it was running low on fuel. As Wolak lined up one last attack run, he knew somehow he had to find a way to show them where to set down.
For security reasons, Wolak and Pope spokesmen declined to identify the man the team was trying to rescue July 2, 2005. But in the official citation for Wolak's medal, the rescue task force is described as the largest assembled since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.
The only big rescue team that day was for a Navy SEAL. Marcus Luttrell was the lone survivor from a four-man team that had been attacked by dozens of enemy fighters while on a mission to find a Taliban leader.
A helicopter full of troops sent in to help them was shot down, killing all 16 people aboard.
According to various press accounts Luttrell, who had taken a bullet to the thigh and suffered shrapnel wounds and cracked vertebrae, crawled until the day after the attack, when an Afghan villager spotted him. Instead of killing the wounded SEAL, though, the man took him home, where the country's custom of hospitality toward strangers meant he was safe. When the Taliban fighters tracked him down, the villagers refused to hand him over, and so the Taliban set up around the village to wait for a chance to kill him.
A villager, though, took a note from Luttrell to a nearby Marine outpost.
Now it was the job of Wolak and the others in the air to make sure Luttrell got home and no more choppers were shot down.
Over the village, Wolak pointed the blunt nose of the A-10 down at the last target, blasted it with the jet's 30-millimeter cannon, then pulled up and maneuvered so that he was looking where the landing zone should be.
For just 10 seconds, according to Air Force records, the clouds parted so that he could see it, and he shined an infrared light onto it. The Taliban fighters couldn't see the light, but the Black Hawk pilot, who, like Wolak, was wearing night vision goggles, could.
After receiving his medal Friday, Wolak -- who has since been promoted to major -- said that the break in the clouds was luck.
Luck or not, the helicopter crew told military officials later that if he hadn't marked the landing zone, they couldn't have landed. Two Afghans helped Luttrell to the Black Hawk, which flew all three to safety.
Staff writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jay.price@newsobserver.com.
Ellie
The men served in Iraq, Afghanistan
Jay Price, Staff Writer
On Friday, an Air Force pilot stationed at Pope Air Force Base received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the dramatic rescue of an American service member in Afghanistan. Monday, a sergeant from Camp Lejeune will be awarded the Bronze Star for leading his troops during a ferocious attack on their tiny outpost in Iraq's Anbar Province. Here are their stories.
It was late morning when a couple of mortar rounds fell near the little base. Then it was quiet again.
Mortar attacks were common, mostly just to harass the Marines. They were in Anbar province, just east of the city of Fallujah, after all. This time, though, something just seemed wrong, thought 1st Sgt. Paul T. Archie, a heavily muscled weight lifter with the raspy voice of a drill sergeant, which he had once been.
And then there was something else, just an extra sense you get after multiple combat tours in Iraq.
Weapons Company of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines had shipped out of Camp Lejeune at the beginning of August 2006 with 191 men. As the top enlisted man, Archie wanted to bring all of them back alive. The odds were against that. In Anbar, it had become routine for infantry companies to lose several Marines during a standard sixth-month tour.
The company's perfect record didn't last long. On Aug. 23, a sniper crept close to a group of Marines guarding a gas station and fired. Lance Cpl. James Hirlston, 21, fell, blood welling from his neck. Hirlston, a former high school wrestler from Murfreesboro, Tenn., left behind a crowd of survivors, including eight siblings.
Every day after that, including the day the mortar rounds fell, Archie reminded his men about Hirlston, about how they were fighting not just for their country but also their fallen buddy.
After the mortar rounds hit, Archie and the other leaders sent reinforcements up into the six rooftop guard posts and others in armored Humvees to protect the roads leading to the base. Two hours later a dump truck roared toward the base. The Marines in the Humvees opened up with a machine gun, and the truck veered off the road and exploded. Then enemy fighters all around the base fired AK-47s and rocket launchers, and mortar shells began falling again.
Archie and company commander 1st Lt. Scott Burlison scrambled from position to position, one at a time, so that if one was shot someone would know. Getting shot was more than a possibility: That day they were exposed to thousands of incoming rounds.
Archie said his job was mainly encouraging the men to "fight like dogs." He also was checking their ammunition supply as he moved around and made sure they identified their targets so no civilians were shot, a key part of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.
Two Marines were wounded; each time Archie rushed to check on them, Hirlston was in the back of his mind. Both lived.
When the shooting stopped, the Marines piped up with their all-purpose word, hoorah. "We did it, first sergeant, we did it," said several. Archie let them celebrate, then reminded them they needed to focus again because that next patrol, that next ambush, they needed to be ready.
The fight had lasted maybe an hour. The next day, they counted up their remaining ammunition. They had fired more than 10,000 rounds.
A medal wasn't what the job was about, Archie said. It was about getting his Marines home. All but one of them made it.
* * *
The pilots and crews of the attack jets and helicopters had carefully planned the rescue attempt. But once they reached the rugged part of Afghanistan where the missing American was supposed to be hiding in a small village, things started going wrong, as they often do in war.
It was a moonless night, and low clouds obscured the spot where the Black Hawk chopper was supposed to set down. Then an equipment failure on the lead A-10 attack plane kept it from firing its guns or dropping bombs.
Capt. Keith M. Wolak, in another A-10, was supposed to be the mission coordinator. Now, though, the 35-year-old Seattle native would have to make attack runs while simultaneously coordinating 17 aircraft packed into a tight space over the rescue area.
Wolak said Friday he made several attack runs, mainly against fortified fighting positions on the mountainsides around the landing zone. The idea was to knock out heavy weapons that could be used against the chopper designated to pick up the serviceman.
But if the Black Hawk crew couldn't figure out where to land, it wouldn't matter. The crew radioed that it was running low on fuel. As Wolak lined up one last attack run, he knew somehow he had to find a way to show them where to set down.
For security reasons, Wolak and Pope spokesmen declined to identify the man the team was trying to rescue July 2, 2005. But in the official citation for Wolak's medal, the rescue task force is described as the largest assembled since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.
The only big rescue team that day was for a Navy SEAL. Marcus Luttrell was the lone survivor from a four-man team that had been attacked by dozens of enemy fighters while on a mission to find a Taliban leader.
A helicopter full of troops sent in to help them was shot down, killing all 16 people aboard.
According to various press accounts Luttrell, who had taken a bullet to the thigh and suffered shrapnel wounds and cracked vertebrae, crawled until the day after the attack, when an Afghan villager spotted him. Instead of killing the wounded SEAL, though, the man took him home, where the country's custom of hospitality toward strangers meant he was safe. When the Taliban fighters tracked him down, the villagers refused to hand him over, and so the Taliban set up around the village to wait for a chance to kill him.
A villager, though, took a note from Luttrell to a nearby Marine outpost.
Now it was the job of Wolak and the others in the air to make sure Luttrell got home and no more choppers were shot down.
Over the village, Wolak pointed the blunt nose of the A-10 down at the last target, blasted it with the jet's 30-millimeter cannon, then pulled up and maneuvered so that he was looking where the landing zone should be.
For just 10 seconds, according to Air Force records, the clouds parted so that he could see it, and he shined an infrared light onto it. The Taliban fighters couldn't see the light, but the Black Hawk pilot, who, like Wolak, was wearing night vision goggles, could.
After receiving his medal Friday, Wolak -- who has since been promoted to major -- said that the break in the clouds was luck.
Luck or not, the helicopter crew told military officials later that if he hadn't marked the landing zone, they couldn't have landed. Two Afghans helped Luttrell to the Black Hawk, which flew all three to safety.
Staff writer Jay Price can be reached at 829-4526 or jay.price@newsobserver.com.
Ellie