Opinion (Sydney J. Freeberg, Jr.): The other three thousand -- recipients of the Bronze Star
Lt. Col. Kris Stillings, left, pins the Bronze Star medal on Cpl. Ignacio Garza during a ceremony in September in Ramadi. Over 3,400 have received the medal since the war began.
By military regulation, an award for valor entitles the recipient to wear a strip of colored cloth precisely one-and-three-eighths-inches wide on the left breast of the uniform, over the heart. Each ribbon, dearly bought, stands for a day that someone did the hard, right thing when everything else went wrong.
On February 21, 2005, before all of his unit had arrived in Iraq, Army Staff Sgt. Thomas Stone and his advance party of California National Guard soldiers stopped to help another group of soldiers after a Humvee accident in downtown Baghdad. Stone shepherded the other unit's dazed troops into a proper security perimeter and called in a helicopter for the injured. But as the chopper landed, an insurgent detonated a hidden roadside bomb that shredded nine men. Stone ran back and forth, braving sniper fire, to grab first-aid supplies. Then, as a second medevac helicopter arrived and the survivors braced for another blast -- a common tactic of Iraqi insurgents -- Stone curled himself around a badly wounded friend, covering the soldier with his own body. "If it goes off, you're going to be OK," Stone told him. "Hug your wife and kids, and don't ever forget me."
Read the rest at the National Journal
By military regulation, an award for valor entitles the recipient to wear a strip of colored cloth precisely one-and-three-eighths-inches wide on the left breast of the uniform, over the heart. Each ribbon, dearly bought, stands for a day that someone did the hard, right thing when everything else went wrong.
On February 21, 2005, before all of his unit had arrived in Iraq, Army Staff Sgt. Thomas Stone and his advance party of California National Guard soldiers stopped to help another group of soldiers after a Humvee accident in downtown Baghdad. Stone shepherded the other unit's dazed troops into a proper security perimeter and called in a helicopter for the injured. But as the chopper landed, an insurgent detonated a hidden roadside bomb that shredded nine men. Stone ran back and forth, braving sniper fire, to grab first-aid supplies. Then, as a second medevac helicopter arrived and the survivors braced for another blast -- a common tactic of Iraqi insurgents -- Stone curled himself around a badly wounded friend, covering the soldier with his own body. "If it goes off, you're going to be OK," Stone told him. "Hug your wife and kids, and don't ever forget me."
Read the rest at the National Journal
posted by iraqnam at 2:55 PM
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