Reservist Earns Silver Star in Iraqi Save
November 06, 2009
Stephens Mediaby Lewis Delavan
Bullets, grenades, shrapnel and smoke seared the desert. Danger lurked where reed-lined ditches hid ambushers on the narrow, isolated dirt road.
"You couldn't see anything from the dust and the smoke as we moved through the explosive area," Capt. John Vanlandingham recalls. "I saw a black object coming through the air over the reeds. It landed about five feet from me in a tire rut. Luckily, it rolled away. I dove down by a wounded soldier and the grenade blew."
It was Nov. 14, 2004, and the insurgency was rocking the Sunni Triangle. Leader of a 10-vehicle convoy that came under attack, the 37-year-old Arkansas Army National Guard captain from tiny New Blaine, 97 miles northwest of Little Rock, refused to leave behind the Iraqis he had trained to become guardsmen.
Twenty miles short of safety at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) ripped motors, trucks and human bodies during the enemy attack.
One explosion pitched 25 Iraqis from an unarmed troop carrier into a ditch. Three dead and others wounded. None, however, would be left behind.
Smoke hid the carnage. Some 200 yards toward safety, Vanlandingham realized one Iraqi vehicle was missing. He told his sergeant to reverse the Humvee and ordered a Mark-19 grenade launcher to cover one roadside, two 50-caliber machine guns to cover the other.
Vanlandingham then ran into the kill zone.
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Reservist Earns Silver Star in Iraqi Save
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