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Silver Star goes to Stryker soldiers tested in Iraq
MICHAEL GILBERT
Massive truck bomb had turned much of the Fort Lewis soldiers’ outpost to rubble. One of their own lay dying and many others wounded.
Some 50 al-Qaida fighters were attacking from several directions with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
It was obvious that the insurgents had come to drive the platoon of Stryker brigade troops out of Combat Outpost Tampa, a four-story concrete building overlooking a major highway through western Mosul, Iraq.
“It crossed my mind that that might be what they were going to try to do,” recalled Staff Sgt. Robert Bernsten, one of 40 soldiers at the outpost that day.
“But I wasn’t going to let that happen, and looking around I could tell nobody else in 2nd platoon was going to let that happen, either.”
He and 10 other soldiers from the same unit – the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment – would later be decorated for their valor on this day of reckoning, Dec. 29, 2004.
Three were awarded the Silver Star, the Army’s third-highest award for heroism in combat.
When you combine those medals with two other Silver Star recipients involved in different engagements, the battalion known as “Deuce Four” stands in elite company. [...]
The Stryker brigade infantry battalion known as “Deuce Four” had five Silver Star and 26 Bronze Star for valor recipients during its year in Iraq.
Silver Star
Maj. Mark Bieger
Staff Sgt. Wesley Holt
Staff Sgt. Shannon Kay
Sgt. Joseph Martin
Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Prosser
Bronze Star for valor
Staff Sgt. Richard Bernsten
Lt. John Bourque
Pfc. Joseph Bourne
Sgt. 1st Class Robert Bowman
Spc. Dennis Burke
Sgt. David Carlton
Sgt. Sebastian Chrzanowski
Spc. Henry Flanagan
Sgt. Roy Freeman
Spc. Mark Fuerbringer
Sgt. Nicholas Furfari
Sgt. 1st Class Mark Gallegos
Sgt. 1st Class Eugene Hicks
Sgt. Brandon Huff
Sgt. Christopher Manikowski
Sgt. 1st Class David McDaniel
Sgt. Ryan Mitchell
Sgt. Benjamin Morton*
Lt. Raub Nash
Spc. Jason Okon
Sgt. Adam Plumondore*
Staff Sgt. Joseph Robeson
Lt. Jeremy Rockwell
Pfc. Oscar Sanchez*
Spc. Steven Sosa
Staff Sgt. Ofa Tali
* Awarded posthumously