Clearing the Fog of War

Medal of honor monument dedicated at Tobin Center

There's long been talk of saluting San Antonio's war heroes, but the idea moved in fits and starts until Thursday, when 175 people converged at the Tobin Center to dedicate the Medal of Honor River Portal.

As a bugler sounded taps, seven granite pylons with brass plaques were unveiled honoring 32 Medal of Honor recipients who were born, raised, enlisted or retired here.

The portal is a gateway to the new Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, which opens in September.

Read more here: http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/military/article/Medal-of-Honor-monument-dedicated-at-Tobin-Center-5599479.php

Pilots saluted with Silver Stars

The mission Philip Bryant and Joshua Hallada flew in their Air Force helicopters out of Bagram Air Field was a familiar routine for best friends.

They had done that for two months in Afghanistan as they flew search-and-rescue missions.

But they've long done everything together — first playing as children, later studying at the Air Force Academy, serving in Asia and finally going to war.

Yet they probably never imagined receiving the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest award for gallantry in combat, in an Air Force hangar Thursday, before family and friends.

Sitting together afterward, they talked of the battle they fought on April 23, 2011, as if it were just another day.

“We knew it was happening, and we trained so much for this that I'd say I was a little nervous, but it was just reacting. We were just doing what we were trained to do,” Bryant said after receiving the medals at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. “We weren't real nervous, but we were very spun up, excited with what was going on.”

An Army helicopter had gone down 20 miles outside of Bagram, its two pilots pinned down by enemy fire. Hallada, pilot of Pedro 83, led the two-ship formation, with Bryant his wingman. Each had four crewmembers and two rescue team members on their ships, and they were ordered to save the downed soldiers.

That was their job. As HH-60G Pavehawk search-and-rescue pilots leading the Air Force's fabled “PJs,” or pararescue teams, they lived the code the organization shares: “These things I do, that others may live.”

They couldn't say how many insurgents were burrowed into the mountainside, but after arriving in the Alasay Valley, Bryant's aircraft, Pedro 84, took fire.

There was more bad news. One of the Army pilots, Iowa Army National Guard Staff Sgt. James Justice, 32, was unconscious.

He later died.

An Air Force account of the battle, coupled with Hallada's Silver Star citation, tells the story.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Pilots-saluted-with-Silver-Stars-3703455.php#ixzz20iSFsX2C

 

Conryn backs bill to give Fort Hood victims Purple Hearts

A Texas senator said Wednesday he backs a bill that would allow troops injured or killed in any terrorist attack on American soil to receive Purple Hearts — including those who fell in the Fort Hood shooting.

Sen. John Conryn said he backed the measure by fellow Republican Peter King, a New York congressman, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to end the distinction between domestic and overseas terrorism in awarding the medal.

The Pentagon would be required to assess each case under the Fort Hood Victims and Families Benefits Protection Act. It would override an Army rule that gives Purple Hearts only to those injured or killed in combat with the enemy.

“Fort Hood has long been a source of pride for all Texans,” he said, “and as the community continues to heal, the heroes who put themselves in harm's way on that fateful day deserve to be recognized for their sacrifice whether overseas or at home.”

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of killing 13 people and wounding another 32 in the Nov. 5 shooting spree inside a crowded post deployment center. His capital murder trial starts Aug. 20 at Fort Hood.

Eyewitnesses testifying in an evidentiary hearing said he cried out, “Allahu akbar!” or God is great, before shooting.

Some in Congress have argued that Hasan was a terrorist, and a number of soldiers on Fort Hood believe he was on jihad. Lieberman's committee said in a report the FBI knew enough “to have detected Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism,” but didn't act.

In initially co-sponsoring the bill in 2011 with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Rep. Ron Carter, both R-Texas, Cornyn contended “the victims were attacked by someone who shares common cause with the very same terrorists our troops are fighting overseas.” He said the victims “deserve the very same benefits and honors for their service and sacrifice.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Cornyn-backs-bill-to-give-Hood-victims-Purple-3546808.php#ixzz1ylXWgYrh

 

Senior airman compelled to help wounded troops

The combat patrol that Senior Airman Michael Malarsie helped lead was like many others, in which the presence of buried mines gave everyone reason to exhale deeply after every step.

This day's patrol that passed a village 295 miles southwest of Kabul, however, was more unnerving than the other four or five times they'd been there, because there was no one in the town.

Malarsie volunteered to search a bridge for explosives. Moments later, he was thrown 20 feet into a ditch, the blast so forceful that it blew out both eyes and shattered his jaw. The point man directly in front of him was killed.

“I was so disoriented, I didn't know which way was up or down,” said Malarsie, 24. “I reached the point where I thought that I would drown and just at that point, someone pulled me out.”

That's only the beginning of Malarsie's story, of the misery of that day and the courageous acts that led the Air Force to award him the Bronze Star with valor.

On the day of the attack, Malarsie tried to fire his rifle but couldn't see. As others on his team ran out of ammunition, he gave them rounds from his weapon. Soon, a second bomb exploded and two more men died, including the 24-year-old medic who saved Malarsie in that January 2010 attack.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Senior-airman-compelled-to-help-wounded-troops-3470097.php#ixzz1ylGxiPNY

 

Homeless veterans receive final salute ex-GIs deserve

As burials go, the one for Albert Lee Renfro and Everado Alvarez-Lara on a misty Wednesday was sad in ways other funerals are not.

There was no sobbing and weeping. No relatives came to Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery to bid the men farewell.

Both died homeless, but 40 or so people, many of them veterans, parents of fallen troops, active-duty soldiers and airmen, made sure that Renfro, 62, and Alvarez-Lara, 64, were given a GI's salute.

“I was never privileged to know these men. Perhaps you were not, either,” Pastor Vernon Welshans told those at Shelter No. 3. “But God knew them.”

The service came courtesy of the Dignity Memorial Homeless Veterans Burial Program, which is in 36 cities nationwide including San Antonio, Waco, Dallas, Houston and El Paso.

There is no program in Abilene, where Marine 1st Sgt. Dale Frerich said one homeless veteran smelled like the rotting corpses he'd encountered in Iraq. Another smelled like formaldehyde.

“I don't know how it happened,” said Frerich, a veteran of Mogadishu and Iraq who coordinates burials in Abilene. “If that's the best that can be done, fine, but I refuse to believe that is the best that can be done.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Homeless-veterans-receive-final-salute-ex-GIs-3389931.php#ixzz1yl2NTkKK

 

The 'perfect soldier'

Retired Maj. Clarence Sprouse was a soldier who never worried about dying and never got hurt, even in hand-to-hand combat.

As one war blurred into three, the legend grew. Gen. William DuPuy, a highly decorated veteran who played a key role in restructuring the post-Vietnam Army, called him the “perfect soldier.”

“He told me I was the bravest guy that he's ever seen and, really, I wasn't,” said Sprouse, who received a battlefield commission from DuPuy while serving as the 1st Infantry Division's command sergeant major in Vietnam. “I was just as scared as everybody else. I didn't show it at all, but I didn't hesitate.”

A paratrooper who was the first soldier in the 11th Airborne Division to make 100 static line jumps and held more than 80 decorations when retiring here in 1968, Sprouse received two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars for valor, 18 Air Medals for assault landings and three Combat Infantry Badges.

He's still fit at 86, and his memories of war in the Pacific, Korea and Vietnam are as clear as if they happened yesterday. His voice is that of a soldier given to using colorful language that includes politically incorrect references to old enemies.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/The-perfect-soldier-2518105.php#ixzz1ykdi4OUJ