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Army awards Bronze Stars to Air guardsmen

It was the loudest sound Tech. Sgt. Michael Frady had ever heard.

The airman was doing soldiers’ work — manning a gun truck guarding a supply convoy pushing toward an Iraqi checkpoint — when a roadside bomb flung Frady shoulder-first into the truck’s bed and replaced his hearing with a shrill whine.

But the bomb was planted backwards mistakenly by the insurgents, leaving the desert to catch much of the shrapnel and leaving Frady alive to receive a Bronze Star from the Army this month.

“All we felt was the percussion of the blast,” Frady said. “I think that’s only reason we’re here.”

Frady and Master Sgt. Henry Stroisch, both Air Force guardsmen stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., were deployed to Iraq three years ago to fill Army shortfalls.

Their work there — training soldiers, setting up computer networks and manning gun trucks fitted with MK-19 machine guns — earned them the Bronze Star.

Buddies back home, the two were deployed with the 2632nd Air Expeditionary Force Transportation Company, the first unit assigned to convoy security missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That meant long days rolling with a 35-truck convoy wagon train hauling supplies in and out of Balad Air Base in northern Iraq.

It was April 30, 2004, not quite two months into their deployment, when Stroisch guarded his first convoy. He was returning to base through the village of Baqubah when he heard the blast that floored Frady.

“My heart sunk,” Stroisch said. “We had a lasting relationship from working together for so long.”

Roughly 300 yards up the road, a dazed Frady pulled himself upright. First he checked on Airman Shaun Hisel, also riding in the gun truck’s bed. Their hearing wiped out, the two communicated with hand signals as the truck commander ordered the convoy to rumble ahead. Small-arms fire, Frady said, felt imminent.

“We noticed there wasn’t really anybody in the town,” Frady said. “So we were kind of bracing for something.”

Both airmen are still active guardsmen living in Washington. Frady, 36, is a systems administrator with a financial software firm in Spokane. Stroisch, 36, is a sheriff’s deputy in Colville.

Though injured, Frady remained with his company throughout their six-month deployment.

“My shoulder hurt every day,” he said. “But I was willing to push through that to keep the team together. These are guys I can trust.”