'It was an instant gunfight every time we left'

Tech. Sgt. Nathan Salvemini didn’t earn his Bronze Star with Valor for a specific mission.

There was no one day or particular battle, no specific operation that earned him the distinction.

Instead, when recalling the events of his deployment to eastern Afghanistan in late 2004 and early 2005, the combat controller from the 321st Special Tactics Squadron at RAF Mildenhall reels off a litany of harrowing events, any one of which sound like they could be the basis of a distinction.

Fighting out of an ambush in an Afghan village. Thwarting a nighttime raid by scores of Taliban fighters on his outpost. Coordinating artillery and air assets to help free a group of pinned-down Marines.

The area around Forward Operating Base Tillman at the time was so rife with enemy activity that, working from observation posts and sniper nests, “Sal” Salvemini was responsible for 80 percent of all close air support missions in Afghanistan over his three-month deployment, commanders later told him.

“It was so active, I wouldn’t even have to call down air support,” Salvemini said. Pilots in combat aircraft — A-10 Thunderbolts, AH-64 Apaches, high-level bombers — knew they could just fly over the area and expect a mission from him, Salvemini said.

It was a dangerous time to be at FOB Tillman, a small outpost within sight of the Pakistan border.

“We were getting hit with 20, 30 rockets every other night,” Salvemini said. On his first day at the base, FOB Tillman was showered with 35 rockets in just two hours, he said.

Going outside the wire was hardly a safe bet either.

“It was instant gunfight every time we left the base,” he said.

Sitting in his outpost one night near the FOB with several Afghan soldiers, for instance, Salvemini got the sense something was wrong. Looking over the edge of the position, he could see “little black dots all coming up the ridge.”

Scores of enemy fighters were halfway up the slope by the time he spotted them, and for once no aircraft appeared to be able to respond before the outpost was going to be overrun.

“I was like, ‘This is going to be over in 10 minutes,’ ” Salvemini said of the predicament.

But by chance, a pair of Apache helicopters had diverted to the area that night, and Salvemini instantly hailed them to assist. He highlighted the fighters with infrared markers, and the helicopters attacked with guns and rockets.

“That quelled the first wave,” he said. Salvemini then called in A-10s to drop guided bombs below his position, and he was relieved as the explosions broke up the attack.

“I was like, ‘Oh yes,’ ” he said.

When the area was surveyed the next morning, the bodies of more than 60 enemy fighters were found, he said.

In another incident, a group of about 30 enemy fighters on a ridge had a group of Marines and Afghan soldiers pinned down in a valley. To get at the fighters, Salvemini devised a deadly ruse.

From his position looking down on the action, he called artillery rounds onto the ridge from a nearby firebase to flush the fighters off the slope. They ran back to a rendezvous point they knew was out of range of the Howitzers and regrouped — in an area Salvemini knew was in range of a second firebase.

By the time the enemy had collected near their getaway car, shells from the second firebase were already in the air, targeting the rendezvous point.

“They kind of looked at each other like, ‘Where did that come from?’ ” he said.

He timed the artillery strike to hit just seconds before he scheduled two A-10s to drop guided bombs and rockets on the target, completing the rout.

Stories like those are just mere samples of Salvemini’s deployment, however, which also saw him engaged in numerous gun battles.

“One day, we got caught up in a pretty good gunfight. … Twenty dudes opened up on us,” he said of one mission.

“We came under direct fire in the middle of [a medical evacuation]. We started getting shot at like crazy,” he said of another day.

“[Sal] is a man who continually steps up to always do the right thing with old-school leadership and motivation,” said Senior Master Sgt. Mickey Wright, superintendent of the 321st STS.