Army News, news from Iraq, - Army Times

Many casualties, many more decorations

Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team deployed to Afghanistan in June 2007 and were promptly tasked with securing some of the country’s most brutal and hostile areas.

By the end of their 15-month tour, the brigade’s third deployment overall and second to Afghanistan since March 2003, 43 soldiers had been killed, only one of them from non-combat related events.

Among the hardest hit units was 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, which lost 24 soldiers, nine of them on a single day. During their deployment, soldiers from the battalion occupied 15 to 25 permanent positions throughout Konar and Nuristan provinces, and they were involved in more than 1,000 direct and indirect engagements with the enemy. Many of those engagements occurred less than a mile from their bases.

But the fierce combat endured by soldiers in the battalion and across the brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, also can be illustrated by a different set of numbers.

Soldiers in the 173rd have earned a Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, and 16 Silver Stars, the third-highest award for valor, said Maj. Nicholas Sternberg, the brigade’s spokesman.

As of Nov. 14, 21 other awards that are Silver Stars or higher were still pending at various stages of the approval process, Sternberg said.

In addition, 89 soldiers from the brigade received Bronze Star Medals with V device, with 33 more pending, and 443 Army Commendation Medals with V device, with nine more awards pending, Sternberg said.

In addition, 229 soldiers were presented with Purple Hearts; three more were still pending.

“The U.S. service members' actions in Wanat that day were everything that we in the military hold dear — loyalty bravery, and an absolute refusal to give up,” said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, spokeswoman for Combined Joint Task Force-101. “Every American should remember these men who paid the ultimate price for our nation.”