Nation & World

<< Previous   of   Next >> Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune  (click to enlarge) Army Sgt. Michael Espejo Jr. receives the Silver Star from Lt. General Charles Jacoby during a ceremony at Fort Lewis on Monday.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Do you have a news tip? newstips@heraldnet.com | 425.339.3400   Published: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Fort Lewis soldier decorated for Afghan war heroism By Michael Gilbert Tacoma News Tribune TACOMA -- It took Sgt. Michael Espejo Jr. a moment to realize that the injured Afghan police officer he was dragging away from a burning truck was no policeman at all. He had one of the man's arms draped over his shoulder and felt an odd bulk under his Afghan National Police shirt. Some new body armor, maybe? And then he noticed the wire coming out of the sleeve and the switch device in the man's hand. A suicide bomber -- in his arms. "I threw him off of me, and started backing away from him," Espejo recalled Monday. He and another soldier took turns falling back and covering each other, yelling at the man in English and in Pashto to put his hands up. There were four other U.S. soldiers, a couple of State Department agents and a number of Afghan police officer all within range of the ball bearings, nails or whatever else might come flying out of the bomber's vest. Espejo kept moving back. And when he started moving his hands together to work the switch, Espejo shot him dead from about 30 yards away. "It all happened in a matter of seconds," he said. On Monday, the Army presented the 26-year-old Fort Lewis military police officer from Bakersfield, Calif., with the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest award for combat valor. Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby Jr., the post commander, said Espejo's actions "perfectly capture the essence, the prototype, of the American soldier in a counterinsurgency." In just a moment, he went from trying to help an injured ally to stopping an insurgent foe, the general said. The incident occurred Sept. 27, 2007, in the Bati Kot district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, not far from the provincial capital of Jalalabad. Espejo's squad was on its way back to its base when it encountered what appeared to be a vehicle bombing at a place the soldiers called the Tree Farm -- the terrain switches dramatically there from featureless desert to groves lining the highway. Attacks happen frequently there. His company commander, Capt. Christopher Hormel, said investigators later theorized that two insurgent suicide bombers were traveling together on the highway, probably bound for Jalalabad, when they struck a man in the road. They stopped, and one of them accidentally blew himself up. The 66th patrol came along to find the other bomber -- dressed in an Afghan National Police uniform -- lying on his back, palms down and disoriented from the explosion. The ordeal didn't end with the shooting. Hormel said his troops spent the next nine hours on the scene, not knowing if there might be other suicide bombers as a crowd grew. Later, an Afghan fire truck suffered a brake failure as it arrived, crashing into the crowd and injuring many, he said. "What Espejo did was save a lot of people's lives," Hormel said. "But I've got a whole unit of heroes." Espejo said he thinks from time to time about how close he came to dying. "After it happened I was kind of standing up against the trucks and I was like, 'Whoa, that was close,"' he said. "And then you shake it off and keep going on with your mission." Espejo said he did what any other soldier would have done in the same situation. But his buddies clearly viewed his actions as above and beyond. They cheered him with applause and handshakes after Monday's medal ceremony. "He's my idol," said Spc. David Banicki, 21, the gunner on Espejo's vehicle that day. "You're going to stand there and pretty much look death in the face and it's either you or him, and you're going to push everybody else away instead of yourself," Banicki said. "It just says a lot about who he is."

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