Clearing the Fog of War

Airman awarded a silver star

Tech. Sgt. Ismael Villegas was awarded the Silver Star in a San Antonio ceremony Monday, marking only the second time in a dozen years that a member of the Air Force Special Operations Command has been given the honor twice.

Standing before Lt. Gen. Eric Fiel, Villegas, 35, of Del Rio was given the Silver Star along with another airman, Staff Sgt. Dale Young.

Both were described by a fellow war veteran as quiet, humble and even laid back, with Villegas likened to a California surfer.

“I had no idea he had a Silver Star until today,” said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Israel Del Toro, who called in airstrikes in Afghanistan until badly injured in a 2005 bomb blast. “Then I found out he had two.”

Villegas and Young, 29, were given the awards at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. Both are combat controllers who led airstrikes against entrenched insurgents in Afghanistan.

Villegas received his first Silver Star in October 2011 from then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz.

A combat controller is not only qualified to call airstrikes for Air Force Special Operations, but also is an Federal Aviation Administration-certified air traffic controller. The job involves mastering many tasks, from making parachute jumps into enemy territory and scuba diving to riding motorcycles and marching through any weather — often fighting in remote and desolate locations.

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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.

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