I stood in an empty lot, waiting for the arrival of the SECFOR Battalion. Waiting along with me were senior officers, as General Pritt, Commander of Task Force Phoenix V marched in with the troops. As the soldiers arrived, they were assembled into their respective Company's. Behind me stood an empty mic, and two loud speakers. This was a special night. The Battalion Commander called his troops to attention, greeted the General with a salute, and retired to the background. The General gave the command to read the orders.
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"Specialist Richard Wisner, post."

"Attention to orders. This is to certify that the President of the United States of America has awarded the Purple Heart, established by General George Washington, at Newburgh, New York, August 7, 1782, to Specialist Richard P. Wisner, United States Army, for wounds received in action on 6 May 2004." As the General pinned the medal on his chest, he expressed his pride in having Specialist Wisner on this deployment with the 41st Brigade.

"He has given the ultimate sacrifice, he has bled for his country." The battalion stood silent as the General spoke.

Specialist Wisner is a soft spoken, and exceedingly humble man from Newport, Oregon. This is his fourth tour, having served in Kuwait in 2000, Egypt from 2002-2003, Iraq in 2004, and now Afghanistan in 2006. He has been a National Guardsman the entire time. He is with this current deployment to Afghanistan by his own choice, stating his reason's for deploying again, in words that have great meaning to veterans of combat, "I can't have my comrades over there and not be there with them." He is currently a Team Leader for 4th Squad, 3rd Platoon, B. SECFOR.

In the description of the events that gained him the honor of a Purple Heart, Specialist Wisner is listed as having received shrapnel wounds from an IED to his lower back, neck, side of his body and his face. However, there is more to his story than just wounds. Part of his mission while in Iraq was to bring food to some of the embedded training teams. "The Army makes sure that you get three meals a day; MRE's are not enough." He went on to describe the day when unexpected events changed his life.

"It was our turn to deliver meals. We were only a couple of minutes outside of the forward operating base [FOB] when we went under an overpass. [The IED] was embedded in the slope side of the overpass... buried in the concrete; it blew up a couple of meters to the rear of our vehicle. I think it was a 133mm artillery round that had been turned into an improvised explosive device. I was knocked unconscious very briefly. Five people were in the vehicle, all five survived. Our gunner got sent home; he was not mission capable anymore."

Captain Caughran, his current Company Commander, added details to the story. After the IED detonated, Specialist Wisner, along with the other four members of his team were knocked unconscious. As he began to recover and regain awareness, "[Specialist Wisner] had the state of mind to realize that the gunner was injured worse than he was. So he and his other comrades in arms chose to forego their injuries and assist their buddy that was more seriously injured." Captain Caughran added, "He put his own wounds aside."

The events of the evening had been carefully planned. Captain Caughran and his 1st Sergeant had gathered the story from Specialist Wisner so that he was unsuspecting of the coming award. As Captain Caughran stated, "We had to find the right time and place to give him this award; this was more than a Company level event." That time was found here at Camp Shelby in the presence of his new Battalion and with the blessing of the General's own hand.

In Specialist Wisner's words, "The honor was a surprise... At first I thought that I was in trouble, [but] could not really think of anything that I had done." What he done was already recorded and worthy of a medal.

His 1st Sergeant stated it plainly, "He's an incredible person. This is one of my proudest moments."

I asked Specialist Wisner about his feelings on this fourth deployment. He expressed them in words worthy of the medal he had received, "We [soldiers] form a bond that most people only form with a couple of people in their lifetimes, and we form that bond with forty to a couple hundred people. The amount of camaraderie doesn't match up in the civilian world. People generally think about how I feel to my other soldiers, and they'll associate it to how they feel to co-workers. It goes a lot beyond that."

After the Company's had been returned to the charge of their individual commanders, General Pritt took time to talk to Specialist Wisner alone. I smiled as I thought back to my interview with the Specialist just moments before...

"How do you feel?"

"Honestly Sir, I'm nervous."

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Copyright, Scott Kesterson- 2006

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