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Battle tested

Mar-28-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By Jesse Harlan Alderman, Durango Herald

It was five minutes after midnight on April 6, 2003. In a matter of hours, allied forces would swarm Baghdad, Iraq, toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. But Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Mestas had already arrived.

The Durango native's helmet was a virtual periscope atop the gun of an M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He and the rest of Charley Company-115 Infantry were among the first American soldiers to reach the Iraqi capital, cutting through the city's northern ring faster than any other military unit.

Mestas would later win a Bronze Star of Valor for the company's sprint to Baghdad.

"My battalion did a division's worth of work," he said. "I knew that would go down in history."

In February, Mestas returned home from his second combat tour - a far more somber homecoming this time around.

While on patrol west of Rawah near the Syrian border, an improvised explosive device detonated under Mestas' armored Stryker, catapulting him six feet into the vehicle's roof and pinning him inside the wreckage.

It would take days to win back movement in his legs. The vehicle's driver, Army Spc. Patrick W. Herried, 29, of Sioux Falls, S.D., died in the blast.

"A total of 12 mortar rounds went off around me at different times," Mestas said while recovering from his injuries at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska. "The 13th one finally got me." [...]


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