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USAF TACP gets Silver Star
Good on ya' Covel....
It served him well that day in June 2004.
With the Iraq War in its second year, Covel was assigned to a coalition force stationed in a northern city. The group included 10 U.S. Special Forces soldiers and a dozen Kurdish Peshmerga troops.
Their mission: Guard against terrorists trying to retake the location. The nearest supporting coalition troops were 45 minutes away.
The action started with the sound of small arms fire hitting the group's safe house.
As soon as he stepped outside, he became a target. As bullets whizzed past him, he dashed across the courtyard in a zig-zag pattern to avoid being shot.
Once on the other side, he climbed to the rooftop and was exposed. All that protected him were a tiny wall around him and a machine-gun nest on the far side.
An American soldier already was manning the machine gun and drawing enemy fire from all directions. Covel got on his belly and crawled to the nest, dragging his communications equipment behind him.
"By this time I just made the decision myself that the situation was a lot worse than what the team leader thinks that it is," Covel said. "So I set up my communications equipment and called in air support."
Soon he was calling in airstrikes. Covel positioned himself so he was the team member closest to where most of the enemy fire originated. So when the bombs came, he was in one shaky spot if he made a bad call.
One other American, a sniper who climbed onto the roof to lay some covering fire, had his ear shot off by a terrorist. The soldier at the machine-gun nest helped him away, leaving Covel alone on the roof.
The fight lasted for a day and half. The terrorists thought they had caught the coalition forces off-guard and laid siege.
Covel, without a chance to rest or be relieved, had to maintain his position on the roof the entire time, from the baking midday sun to chilly evening air.
The airstrikes Covel directed kept the enemy continually at bay. Gradually the terrorist attacks grew less frequent — and the enemy retreated when it realized it didn't have the coalition forces on the ropes after all.
When told after the battle that he was up for a Silver Star, Covel thought people were joking.
"I didn't feel that I did anything out of the ordinary," he said. "It was a crappy situation . . . but you do anything you can to protect the guys you are fighting with."
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“The Spartans do not enquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.”Agis II, 427 B.C.
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Does not get much closer that that.
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