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Star soldiers
Guardsmen awarded Silver Stars for their heroic actions in battle
By Gina Cavallaro
Staff writer
The Army said Sgt. 1st Class Chad Stephens acted heroically one morning during a fierce battle with insurgents north of Baghdad.
He exposed himself to enemy fire so unhesitatingly June 24, 2004, that, by all accounts, he should have died in the same fight that cost the lives of his company commander and a young Bradley gunner.
Instead, at a ceremony Oct. 22 in Jacksonville, N.C., more than two years after the battle, Stephens was around to receive a Silver Star medal, and he took the opportunity to remind his soldiers of something he had told them before they went to war in 2004:
“I told my soldiers before we went to Iraq that if something happened to them, I would be there for them and that still stands. I will be there with them,” Stephens, of Ahoskie, N.C., told Army Times.
The 38-year-old platoon sergeant with the North Carolina National Guard’s Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry, just re-enlisted for six years, so his promise is more than likely to be kept.
On the day of the battle, an estimated 100 insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, grenades, daisy-chained roadside bombs and automatic rifles were waiting in several ambush sites along patrol routes in Baqubah, 30 miles north of Baghdad.
At daybreak, shortly after soldiers of 3rd Platoon left base on patrol, they were attacked. Forced to return to base, they were relieved by Stephens’ 1st Platoon, which had just returned from a four-hour patrol but turned right around to go and meet the enemy.
Stephens, a Bradley commander, was second in a column of five Bradleys as they entered an urban canyon of buildings lining both sides of the road.
When he learned that the last two Bradleys had dropped away because his commander, Capt. Chris Cash, 36, had been wounded, he tried to radio the Bradley behind him with a warning.
“I saw a row of RPGs on the top of this six-story building and I knew once they passed that building [the insurgents] were going to fire everything they had because he was the last Bradley,” Stephens said of the vehicle in which Spc. Daniel Desens, 21, was the gunner. And he was right.
Desens and six infantrymen sitting in the Bradley’s troop compartment were wounded when an RPG sliced through their vehicle, igniting ammunition that created a billowing haze of smoke.
Mortally wounded, Desens continued to fire, and the driver, disoriented from the smoke, headed in the wrong direction. Stephens got out of his Bradley and ran 50 meters under heavy fire toward the smoking Bradley.
“When I jumped on the vehicle, the driver saw me and I told him to follow me,” said Stephens, who had taken off his communications helmet, was unarmed and had not put on his body armor or Kevlar helmet.
The Bradley driver turned around and began moving away from the fight, then came to a stop, allowing Stephens to climb to the top where he could get to Desens, who could not be evacuated through the troop compartment because of his wounds.
Stephens had to pry Desens’ fingers off the gun’s trigger.
The Bradley commander, who had been knocked out in the attack, regained consciousness and tried to help him lift Desens out but was shot in the arm. Stephens pulled Desens out single-handedly as shots flew all around them.
Stephens organized a casualty collection point and regrouped the platoon into two Bradleys to evacuate to Forward Operating Base Gabe a few miles away.
But the enemy continued attacking. The infantrymen fought back until the Bradley carrying Desens and other wounded soldiers was struck, this time wounding Stephens and knocking his gunner unconscious.
Stephens again regrouped the platoon and helped get the infantrymen back to the base. He revived his gunner, who continued shooting even though he had a serious wound to his back.
The fighting continued for the rest of the day and Stephens went back out to help with ongoing combat operations under an interim company commander.
In the end, Cash and Desens died, and several others were wounded.
Stephens remembers talking to his chaplain before the battalion deployed for Iraq in 2004.
“The chaplain said two things. Accept death, you could die any time. And, he said the E-5s and the E-6s will be running the battle, but there’s going to come a time when you and your lieutenants are going to have to stand up and say ‘follow me,’” Stephens said. “Those words came back to me.”
A specialist’s ‘instinct’
Stephens was the second National Guard soldier in little more than a week to get a Silver Star. New Hampshire National Guard Spc. Richard Ghent, 21, of Rochester, was recognized Oct. 14 for his heroic actions in Iraq earlier this year.
Ghent survived a grenade blast, and, getting to his feet in a post-explosion haze with a gunshot wound to his back and shrapnel cuts on his face, charged his attackers using his 9mm pistol.
He doesn’t know if he killed any of the attackers and he doesn’t remember what was going through his mind at the time.
“I just did it. It was instinct,” Ghent said, recalling that he assumed he was the lone survivor among the three in the Humvee.
The attack occurred March 1 at an observation post outside Camp Ramadi in Anbar province west of Baghdad. It was around 2 p.m. and the threesome — Ghent, the gunner; Spc. Christopher Merchant, 32, the driver; and Staff Sgt. Jose Pequeno, 32, the truck commander — were parked on a bridge overlooking a main supply route. Their mission was to make sure no one stopped to plant a roadside bomb or otherwise disrupted the line of communication.
It was a mission they had done dozens of times and they were just about to get off their shift when two huge car-bomb explosions rocked an Iraqi police station on the road below. While their attention was on the explosion, nearby trouble came at them.
“We turned around and there was a huge mushroom cloud and that’s when the car stopped under the bridge,” Ghent said.
In the commotion, an unknown number of men had gotten out of a car parked under the overpass and climbed up to the road near their position.
“I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, the grenade hit me in the face and fell into the turret onto the back seat,” he said.
“I yelled, ‘grenade’ and hopped out and while I was on the top of the truck getting ready to jump off, that’s when the grenade went off,” he said.
In the explosion, Merchant was killed, Pequeno critically wounded and Ghent thrown from the top of the Humvee.
During the brief moments of his disorientation, more grenades went off and an RPG struck the Humvee, Ghent said. He regained his wits, got to his feet and pulled his pistol from a holster he had designed to attach to his body armor.
“The bad guys were firing with AKs and RPKs. I went through my first magazine and after I changed it, I went toward them. They were running down the embankment,” he said.
Then a team of soldiers from another observation post about a mile away came to reinforce the fight and evacuate the wounded.
“That’s when I went back to the Humvee and saw Pequeno,” he said.
He and Pequeno had already earned Purple Hearts by surviving a roadside bomb explosion in another location a few months earlier. Now they each have two.
Pequeno is still hurt, recovering from severe head wounds at a rehabilitation center in Florida. Ghent has completely recovered and is studying to become an emergency medical technician.
“Staff Sgt. Pequeno pushed a lot of training on us, a lot of magazine changes. We thought it was stupid, we actually bitched about it quite a bit,” Ghent said. “But I guess it all paid off.”
Guardsmen awarded Silver Stars for their heroic actions in battle
By Gina Cavallaro
Staff writer
The Army said Sgt. 1st Class Chad Stephens acted heroically one morning during a fierce battle with insurgents north of Baghdad.
He exposed himself to enemy fire so unhesitatingly June 24, 2004, that, by all accounts, he should have died in the same fight that cost the lives of his company commander and a young Bradley gunner.
Instead, at a ceremony Oct. 22 in Jacksonville, N.C., more than two years after the battle, Stephens was around to receive a Silver Star medal, and he took the opportunity to remind his soldiers of something he had told them before they went to war in 2004:
“I told my soldiers before we went to Iraq that if something happened to them, I would be there for them and that still stands. I will be there with them,” Stephens, of Ahoskie, N.C., told Army Times.
The 38-year-old platoon sergeant with the North Carolina National Guard’s Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry, just re-enlisted for six years, so his promise is more than likely to be kept.
On the day of the battle, an estimated 100 insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, grenades, daisy-chained roadside bombs and automatic rifles were waiting in several ambush sites along patrol routes in Baqubah, 30 miles north of Baghdad.
At daybreak, shortly after soldiers of 3rd Platoon left base on patrol, they were attacked. Forced to return to base, they were relieved by Stephens’ 1st Platoon, which had just returned from a four-hour patrol but turned right around to go and meet the enemy.
Stephens, a Bradley commander, was second in a column of five Bradleys as they entered an urban canyon of buildings lining both sides of the road.
When he learned that the last two Bradleys had dropped away because his commander, Capt. Chris Cash, 36, had been wounded, he tried to radio the Bradley behind him with a warning.
“I saw a row of RPGs on the top of this six-story building and I knew once they passed that building [the insurgents] were going to fire everything they had because he was the last Bradley,” Stephens said of the vehicle in which Spc. Daniel Desens, 21, was the gunner. And he was right.
Desens and six infantrymen sitting in the Bradley’s troop compartment were wounded when an RPG sliced through their vehicle, igniting ammunition that created a billowing haze of smoke.
Mortally wounded, Desens continued to fire, and the driver, disoriented from the smoke, headed in the wrong direction. Stephens got out of his Bradley and ran 50 meters under heavy fire toward the smoking Bradley.
“When I jumped on the vehicle, the driver saw me and I told him to follow me,” said Stephens, who had taken off his communications helmet, was unarmed and had not put on his body armor or Kevlar helmet.
The Bradley driver turned around and began moving away from the fight, then came to a stop, allowing Stephens to climb to the top where he could get to Desens, who could not be evacuated through the troop compartment because of his wounds.
Stephens had to pry Desens’ fingers off the gun’s trigger.
The Bradley commander, who had been knocked out in the attack, regained consciousness and tried to help him lift Desens out but was shot in the arm. Stephens pulled Desens out single-handedly as shots flew all around them.
Stephens organized a casualty collection point and regrouped the platoon into two Bradleys to evacuate to Forward Operating Base Gabe a few miles away.
But the enemy continued attacking. The infantrymen fought back until the Bradley carrying Desens and other wounded soldiers was struck, this time wounding Stephens and knocking his gunner unconscious.
Stephens again regrouped the platoon and helped get the infantrymen back to the base. He revived his gunner, who continued shooting even though he had a serious wound to his back.
The fighting continued for the rest of the day and Stephens went back out to help with ongoing combat operations under an interim company commander.
In the end, Cash and Desens died, and several others were wounded.
Stephens remembers talking to his chaplain before the battalion deployed for Iraq in 2004.
“The chaplain said two things. Accept death, you could die any time. And, he said the E-5s and the E-6s will be running the battle, but there’s going to come a time when you and your lieutenants are going to have to stand up and say ‘follow me,’” Stephens said. “Those words came back to me.”
A specialist’s ‘instinct’
Stephens was the second National Guard soldier in little more than a week to get a Silver Star. New Hampshire National Guard Spc. Richard Ghent, 21, of Rochester, was recognized Oct. 14 for his heroic actions in Iraq earlier this year.
Ghent survived a grenade blast, and, getting to his feet in a post-explosion haze with a gunshot wound to his back and shrapnel cuts on his face, charged his attackers using his 9mm pistol.
He doesn’t know if he killed any of the attackers and he doesn’t remember what was going through his mind at the time.
“I just did it. It was instinct,” Ghent said, recalling that he assumed he was the lone survivor among the three in the Humvee.
The attack occurred March 1 at an observation post outside Camp Ramadi in Anbar province west of Baghdad. It was around 2 p.m. and the threesome — Ghent, the gunner; Spc. Christopher Merchant, 32, the driver; and Staff Sgt. Jose Pequeno, 32, the truck commander — were parked on a bridge overlooking a main supply route. Their mission was to make sure no one stopped to plant a roadside bomb or otherwise disrupted the line of communication.
It was a mission they had done dozens of times and they were just about to get off their shift when two huge car-bomb explosions rocked an Iraqi police station on the road below. While their attention was on the explosion, nearby trouble came at them.
“We turned around and there was a huge mushroom cloud and that’s when the car stopped under the bridge,” Ghent said.
In the commotion, an unknown number of men had gotten out of a car parked under the overpass and climbed up to the road near their position.
“I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, the grenade hit me in the face and fell into the turret onto the back seat,” he said.
“I yelled, ‘grenade’ and hopped out and while I was on the top of the truck getting ready to jump off, that’s when the grenade went off,” he said.
In the explosion, Merchant was killed, Pequeno critically wounded and Ghent thrown from the top of the Humvee.
During the brief moments of his disorientation, more grenades went off and an RPG struck the Humvee, Ghent said. He regained his wits, got to his feet and pulled his pistol from a holster he had designed to attach to his body armor.
“The bad guys were firing with AKs and RPKs. I went through my first magazine and after I changed it, I went toward them. They were running down the embankment,” he said.
Then a team of soldiers from another observation post about a mile away came to reinforce the fight and evacuate the wounded.
“That’s when I went back to the Humvee and saw Pequeno,” he said.
He and Pequeno had already earned Purple Hearts by surviving a roadside bomb explosion in another location a few months earlier. Now they each have two.
Pequeno is still hurt, recovering from severe head wounds at a rehabilitation center in Florida. Ghent has completely recovered and is studying to become an emergency medical technician.
“Staff Sgt. Pequeno pushed a lot of training on us, a lot of magazine changes. We thought it was stupid, we actually bitched about it quite a bit,” Ghent said. “But I guess it all paid off.”
