While moving through several compounds after infiltrating enemy territory with his special operations forces counterparts, Ruiz and two U.S. Army Special Forces teammates became separated from the main friendly element. They were immediately confronted by four insurgents in a point-blank engagement. Ruiz and his teammates quickly killed the enemy, but suddenly became trapped in a courtyard by vicious and intense insurgent crossfire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t really think, I reacted,\u201d Ruiz said. \u201cAnytime something bad happens in my career, I just fall back on my training. It prepares us for what we can encounter when we are doing our work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two Soldiers were immediately wounded by the enemy\u2019s barrage of heavy gunfire and grenades, rendering them immobile and exposed. According to the medal citation, Ruiz sprinted through the waves of gunfire with complete disregard for his own personal safety to defend his teammates in their exposed position.<\/p>\n
Ruiz was forced to fight lying flat on the ground due to grenades exploding around him, some only 15 feet from his position. He continued to return fire at multiple enemy locations to prevent enemy fighters from maneuvering toward his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to make sure my guys didn’t get hurt any more than they already were,\u201d Ruiz said. \u201cI just wanted to do my job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Refusing to take cover or leave his wounded teammates exposed to potentially fatal shots, Ruiz continued to fight the enemy alone in the courtyard until reinforcements arrived. Once they did, he advanced again through a hail of gunfire, dragged his teammates to a nearby position of concealment and immediately administered life-saving trauma care. Due to the lack of light, Ruiz had to use night vision goggles to administer the care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AW1Ed sends us a link to af.mil which tells the story of Master Sergeant Ivan Ruiz … Master Sergeant Ivan Ruiz’ Air Force Cross<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Master](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Master-Sergeant-Ivan-Ruiz-300x266.jpg\")
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