Heroes 2011
'The round impacts were all around us'
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When the 12-man Special Forces team arrived at the site of the ambush, the Afghan troops were in dire straits.
Some were huddled in a shallow well to the right of the road, and more were pinned down in a mud compound to the left. It was June 11, 2007, in Uruzgan province, and the Special Forces team was on a month-long patrol to prevent the Taliban from moving freely from village to village, said Master Sgt. Antonio Gonzalez, who on that day was a sergeant first class.
The Afghan troops were escorting the unit’s three supply trucks to meet the team when they ran into about 80 insurgents armed with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
“We heard the shots fired and we kind of looked at each other like, ‘What’s that?’ ” Gonzalez said.
When they figured out what was going on, they wasted little time. The team got into its vehicles and raced toward the sound of gunfire in a “hooking maneuver,” going north and then cutting back south toward the besieged Afghan troops, catching the Taliban off guard.
Gonzalez saw an enemy fighter with a belt-fed weapon and radio — then promptly shot him dead.
Arriving on the scene, Sgt. 1st Class Mark Roland’s Humvee came upon enemy fighters maneuvering in a dry drainage trench below.
“An enemy jumped up directly to the side of our vehicle, about six to 10 feet away and he shot his AK-47 on automatic up the entire side of the vehicle,” said Roland, now a chief warrant officer 2.
The rounds pelted the side of the Humvee, the windshield and the turret. The gunner also was struck, his armored chest plate saving his life.
Roland dropped a fragmentary grenade into the six-foot deep trench, waited for it to explode, and then jumped in.
The enemy fighter was on the ground about 15 feet away and reaching for his weapon. Roland shot him before he could grab it.
As Roland was taking the dead man’s weapon and ammunition off of him, a second enemy fighter appeared in the trench.
Roland’s rifle misfired.
“My driver said, ‘I see him, I got him,’ and he engaged him,” Roland said.
Roland and the driver eased through the rest of the trench system, stopping every 10 or 15 yards to drop grenades or shoot into well holes, just to make sure no Taliban remained.
After they got back into the Humvee, Roland spotted about eight Afghan soldiers hiding in the shallow well, so two Humvees got as close to them as possible and Roland ran more than 30 yards to them.
He had an interpreter explain that he wanted half of the Afghans to run to his vehicle and half to go to the other, but they didn’t want to move.
“The position was untenable for everybody at that point in time,” Roland said. “It was not a place to be hanging out, with the enemy firing from three sides around you and knowing exactly where you’re at and what you’re up to. The round impacts were all around us and they were only intensifying.”
Roland grabbed a few of the Afghan troops, pulled them out of the hole and escorted them into the back of his vehicle.
“That kind of initiated the whole action,” he said. “No one else wanted to stay in that hole if other people were leaving it.”
Roland made two trips back into the hole to grab more troops and their weapons.
“That’s time I felt the most exposed,” said Roland, who received a Silver Star for his efforts. “The jig was up, everybody out there on that battlefield could see what was happening.”
Meanwhile, Gonzalez spotted Afghan troops in the mud compound. He waved for them to come toward him, but they would not. They were taking heavy fire.
Gonzalez flashed a mischievous smile in the direction of his gunner.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
Zigzagging and firing as he dashed through the kill zone, he finally made it to the Afghans. He covered them as they sprinted to safety.
“I made it back to our truck and asked, ‘Hey, do we have everybody?’ They gave me the thumbs up,” Gonzalez said.
Then he glanced back at the compound and saw that more Afghan soldiers had moved into it.
“OK, that’s not everybody,” he said.
Once again, Gonzalez ran to help Afghan troops get back to safety. And once again, as soon as he got back to his Humvee, he looked back and saw more to be rescued.
“Third time is usually the time that you get hit, because after the first and second time, those snipers are pretty much calculating their misses, so I’m sure the third time they’ll get it right,” Gonzalez said.
But he made it to the compound again, and this time, he looked around to make sure there weren’t any more Afghan troops outside.
On the way back a final time, something told him stop in his tracks. As soon as he did, bullets whizzed by his face.
“The Lord was on my side that day,” he said.
When it was all over, Gonzalez had rescued 15 Afghan soldiers and earned his own Silver Star.
“After that day, they were devoted to the team,” he said. “We built a bridge between us and them that was difficult to break.”
