Category: Real Soldiers

Honey Badger sends us a link which is a couple of months old, but it’s new to me. It’s about National Guard Specialist Jonathan Sweeney who was on his way to National Guard training in downtown Portland, Oregon when he heard a woman scream and saw a guy trying to steal he baby. From KATU;

“When I heard her scream, I ran,” National Guardsman Specialist Jonathan Sweeney told KATU News. “It looked like he was trying to pick up the little girl and get his hands on her.”

Sweeney held [54-year-old Robin] Rollins at an arms length after he separated Rollins from the child. That’s when Rollins threw a punch.

“When he hit me, I maintained the same posture holding him… and then a haymaker on the side of my neck,” Sweeney said.

He held Rollins until the police arrived to take him away and Sweeney took off because he was running late for drill.

“I don’t consider myself a hero I just consider myself a person going and trying to do the right thing,” he said.

According to Tucson News Now, last year, Sergeant Kyle Stephens and Specialist Michael Knight, of the Nevada Army National Guard, were doing some night fishing when they heard a crash and saw a bright blue flash nearby. They ran towards the terrifying sounds and sights and pulled Ronaldo de la Ree from his burning car.

De la Ree didn’t know who saved him that day. He said he had been drinking before he got behind the wheel. He doesn’t remember where he was going and couldn’t remember anything leading up to the crash.

Earlier this year, he learned the identities of his rescuers after reading a Nevada National Guard news release.

De la Ree finally met his heroes in person on Monday at the Army National Guard Heliport at Pinal Air Park.

De la Ree says that he has been sober since the accident, and thanks to Stephens and Knight he has that opportunity to turn his life around.

Thanks to Eggs for the link.

Today is National Medal of Honor Day, so it’s fitting that we pay our respects to Santiago Jesus Erevia who, sadly, passed on Tuesday. He was awarded his Medal of Honor just two years ago for his actions on May 26th, 1969. By all accounts, he was embarrassed by the attention that honor gained for him. He was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but a review of DSCs in 2002 prompted the Pentagon to upgrade the award to the Medal of Honor. From Stars & Stripes;

“He was a very, very modest, very, very decent person and his wife must be just devastated,” said [retired two-star Army general Patrick] Brady, 79, of New Braunfels. “He was kind of taken by all the publicity and everything that went on. He was very humble about it.

“Like most of them, they don’t believe they really deserve it and then they get all that attention and it just kind of overwhelmed him a little bit.”

Erevia was anything but overwhelmed on May 26, 1969, though, according to his Medal of Honor citation;

Specialist Fourth Class Santiago Jesus Erevia…while serving as a radio telephone operator in Company C, 1st Battalion (Airmobile), 501st Infantry, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) during search and clear mission near Tam Ky, Republic of Vietnam on 21 May 1969. After breaching an insurgent perimeter, Specialist Four Erevia was designated by his platoon leader to render first aid to several casualties, and the rest of the platoon moved forward. As he was doing so, he came under intense hostile fire from four bunkers to his left front. Although he could have taken cover with the rest of the element, he chose a retaliatory course of action. With heavy enemy fire directed at him, he moved in full view of the hostile gunners as he proceeded to crawl from one wounded man to another, gathering ammunition. Armed with two M-16 rifles and several hand grenades, he charged toward the enemy positions behind the suppressive fire of the two rifles. Under very intense fire, he continued to advance on the insurgents until he was near the first bunker. Disregarding the enemy fire, he pulled the pin from a hand grenade and advanced on the bunker, leveling suppressive fire until he could drop the grenade into the bunker, mortally wounding the insurgent and destroying the fortification. Without hesitation, he employed identical tactics as he proceeded to eliminate the next two enemy positions. With the destruction of the third bunker, Specialist Four Erevia had exhausted his supply of hand grenades. Still under intense fire from the fourth position, he courageously charged forward behind the fire emitted by his M-16 rifles. Arriving at the very edge of the bunker, he silenced the occupant within the fortification at point blank range. Through his heroic actions the lives of the wounded were saved and the members of the Company Command Post were relieved from a very precarious situation. His exemplary performance in the face of overwhelming danger was an inspiration to his entire company and contributed immeasurably to the success of the mission. Specialist Four Erevia’s conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism, and intrepidity at the risk of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

AverageNCO sends us the link to a story about 84-year-old Edward Grady Halcomb who received the award of the Distinguished Service Cross that 19-year-old Private First Class Edward Grady Halcomb earned on the battlefields of Korea more than 60 years ago;

Halcomb was captured in July 1950 along with more than 370 soldiers. He became the senior medic for the POWs at age 19. Volunteering to stay with the most severely wounded, giving them his food, Halcomb helped his fellow prisoners as they were forced to march north. He and four others managed to escape in October.

But Halcomb’s nomination for the Distinguished Service Cross was lost or overlooked. By the time it was discovered, it took an Act of Congress to lift the time limitation on the award. Ross helped usher that measure through Congress.

[…]

“When the enemy retreated from Seoul, he (Halcomb) alone volunteered to stay with the weakest prisoners who were forced to walk with the main column on a grueling 120-mile march to Pyongyang,” McDaniel read from the award citation. “By placing himself with the most disabled, Pfc. Halcomb increased the probability of his own execution as the enemy guards executed soldiers, whose physical condition became a burden or slowed the pace.”

According to the report of his POW Medal in the Hall of Valor, PFC Halcomb escaped from captivity three months after he was captured. According to the article, Halcomb retired from the Army in 1968 as a Sergeant First Class. If you go looking for him at DPAA, you won’t find him, but the Korean War accounting for POWs is sketchy at best, illustrating the complexity of that war and the shifting front of the battle.

The Army Times reports that the Army will award Sergeant First Class Matthew McClintock a posthumous Silver Star Medal for his actions on January 5th that cost him his life. The young special forces soldier was a member of the Washington National Guard’s A Company 19th Special Forces Group when his unit was pinned down near Marjah, Afghanistan in the Helmand Province.

There is some controversy about the support that those soldiers received from the Quick Reaction Force. there are also questions about a an AC-130 gunship that was called off because of “collateral casualty” fears.

He was killed and two others were wounded Jan. 5 in hours-long fighting near the city of Marjah, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Her husband’s teammates have since told [McClintock’s wife, Alexandra] that he left a compound, under fire, to find a new landing zone so a helicopter could land and evacuate his wounded teammate, Alexandra McClintock said.

“He ran out without even thinking about himself,” she said. “When he got to really do his job and do the job he loved, he came home a happy man.”

[…]

She is grateful to the Army, which “moved mountains” to get Matthew McClintock home from Afghanistan to witness Declan’s birth.

“He got to spend two weeks with his little boy,” Alexandra McClintock said. “My husband, holding his son, he was glowing. It was just surreal.”

3E9 and Leonard send us a link to the story of former Marine Brian Crotts who was driving around Cleveland County, North Carolina with his wife when he saw a burning home. he stopped to see if he could help. He ended up rushing into the burning house and carrying J.B. Newton and his wife, Naomi Newton, from the inferno, the flames licking at his own clothing. Mrs. Newton wasn’t breathing when he got her to safety and he did some CPR on her and she recovered.

Crotts slipped away from the scene. Neighbors said they didn’t know who the good Samaritan was. He decided to speak publicly, not because he considers himself a hero, but because he has a message for Mr. and Mrs. Newton’s relatives.

“I want the family to know that lady asked about her husband when she came to, and that man, the only thing he was thinking about was his wife.”

Unfortunately, the Newtons both succumbed to their injuries, but not because Brian didn’t try hard enough.

wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina