One of the Guys

I got an email from 1LT Chad (now Captain Chad) over the weekend.

He and his men (they’re not “boys” or “kids”) are home from Afghanistan and he and his wife are swinging through the PacNW in the next couple weeks. David and I will be meeting up with them right after we get back from Boomershoot.

Cap’n Chad sent me a link to this article.

Staff Sgt. Rashe Hall’s face was burned and his uniform was smoldering. He was bleeding, his helmet had come off and he could not use his right arm.

None of that stopped him from charging up a hill to break up an ambush in Afghanistan.

The 25-year-old combat engineer from Ventura, Calif., received the Silver Star Medal on Friday at Fort Bragg for his actions on Aug. 21, 2006. The award is the Army’s third-highest for battlefield valor.

“I looked around, and there was just so much that needed to be done,” Hall said after the ceremony. “Everything was memory and the training that we had.”

A rocket-propelled grenade had exploded near his head in his vehicle, causing shrapnel wounds and burns on the left side of his face and neck and shrapnel wounds in his right arm. But he refused medical assistance to help a medic treat wounded soldiers.

The 525-soldier 27th Engineer Battalion recently returned from a year in Afghanistan. The airborne combat engineer battalion stood together in formation Friday for the first time in a year, said Lt. Col. Tom O’Hara, the battalion commander.

Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst, the deputy commander of Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps, pinned a Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart on Hall.

Thirty-two soldiers received awards on Myitkina Field in the battalion area on Gruber Road. Purple Hearts were pinned on 24 soldiers who received combat wounds.

Although they were attacked many times, the battalion had no soldiers die in Afghanistan during the past year.

Now would be the appropriate time for you to thank your preferred diety for that.

Click the above link and read the rest of the article. SSgt. Rashe Hall’s humility would make the Dali Lama check his own.

Cap’n Chad sent the link along with the words “One of the guys”. I know and you know that these men are professionals, but if Chad deems SSgt. Hall as the mean, then even we are seriously underestimating our own warfighters.

As you’ve read in the article, 32 soldiers were decorated that day. Cap’n Chad lists them as 24 Purple Hearts, 1 Silver Star, 3 Bronze Stars with Vs, and at least 15 Army Commendation Medals with Vs.

I know a big RNS thank you will be passed along when he goes back to Bragg. You all know how to leave any messages you’d like to have passed along. I know that they’ll be appreciated.