The
president bestowed the Medal of Honor Wednesday
afternoon upon the parents of Staff Sgt. Robert J.
Miller, whose actions allowed seven of his Special
Forces teammates and 15 Afghan soldiers to escape an
ambush kill zone.
"Today, it is my privilege to present our nation’s
highest military decoration -- the Medal of Honor -- to
one of these remarkable Soldiers, Staff Sergeant Robert
J. Miller," Obama said.
The president went on to say that courage was a defining
factor in Miller's life.
"It has been said that courage is not simply one of the
virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing
point," Obama said. "For Rob Miller, the testing point
came nearly three years ago, deep in a snowy Afghan
valley. But the courage he displayed that day reflects
every virtue that defined his life."
The president told them Miller was a true leader, as
demonstrated by two previous commendations for valor
during his first tour in Afghanistan.
On his second tour there, Miller -- known simply as
Robby to his teammates, family, friends and teachers --
was killed after he volunteered to serve as point for a
night patrol with Operational Detachment Alpha 3312, in
the Chenar Khar Valley near the Pakistan border Jan. 25,
2008. He was just 24.
Miller's fellow Green Berets remember the nightmare of
how everything went down on that freezing winter night
on the other side of the world.
'Ambush Alley' Mission
Around 9 p.m., on Jan. 24, ODA 3312 received word that a
Predator unmanned aerial vehicle feed had picked up
enemy fighters armed with RPGs moving into a house.
Miller's unit was ordered to link up with Afghan
soldiers and proceed into "ambush alley," traveling as
far as possible in their uparmored Humvees, then
dismounting and moving toward the compound.
Once the unit was able to confirm the Predator was on
the money, the team's Air Force joint tactical air
controller would radio for a few 500-pound bombs to be
dropped. Once the bombs had been dropped the team would
move in and conduct a battle-damage assessment - at
least that was the plan.
Staff Sgt. Eric Martin recalled that as his team moved
up the mountain in their vehicles, with practically
vertical 300-foot cliffs to the left and the right of
the road, there just wasn't much wiggle room for
protection or for counter-attacking because their guns
were already angled up to max elevation. To make matters
worse, the convoy came across two boulders at different
intervals that had to be blown with C4.
"I was thinking, okay, we're gonna get hit from here, so
we were trying to be as quiet as possible until the
explosion obviously," he said. "The second boulder was
nearly within sight of the objective, so we had to come
to a stop again and blow that boulder. I believe that's
when the enemy was tipped off."
Attack goes forward
The Afghan soldiers and ODA 3312 moved on until they
positioned themselves where they could begin to attack.
Then Martin and his team noticed through night-vision
devices, fighters emerging from the house and taking up
new positions.
When the firefight began, Martin thought everything was
going great because the unit hadn't received any
effective fire; nothing was impacting close to the team.
The unit was returning heavy volumes of fire, so it
seemed pretty one-sided and like the enemy was trying to
bug out of the area, he recalled.
"Nothing unusual about it," Martin said. "It became
unusual after the initial bombs were dropped and we'd
opened with heavy fire." The unit then sent a dismounted
element ahead of the vehicles which Miller was point
for.
"This was Robby's second trip over and he had picked up
Pashto on the first deployment... he had a talent for
languages, he knew French, German, a little bit of
Russian," Martin added. "He just had a gift which is why
he was out front talking to the Afghans and in the
position he was in, because the ANA soldiers had moved
out too quickly and we needed to slow them down to gain
command and control."
The dismounted element led the convoy across a bridge.
Still everything seemed good, no shots had been fired,
more than a few bombs had been dropped, so the
assumption was the unit had taken out the enemy
forces... until the sound of a Russian-built PKM machine
gun split the air, answered by an M249 squad automatic
weapon and M4 carbine fire. The entire hillside erupted
into muzzle flashes and chaos.
Covering fire saves team
Martin knew the high-pitched cracks of the SAW, and he
also knew Robby was behind the trigger, because he had
left base without a suppressor, rolling heavy with extra
200-round 5.56mm drums attached to his kit.
"He didn't care about the weight... it was that
mentality he had that characterized the whole team...
'we're gonna roll heavy; we're gonna make sure we're
ready to fight and that we're prepared for it,'" said
Martin.
When the hillside exploded into a firefight, the Special
Forces team found themselves in a close-quarters ambush
less than 50 feet from Taliban fighters. Almost
immediately, the team's leader, Capt. Robert B. Cusick,
had gone down after being wounded.
That's when Miller took command, taking out a
machine-gun nest, always moving forward, firing
constantly and throwing grenades while his teammates
moved in reverse from the kill zone with their wounded
captain, radioing for a medevac helo and working to
regain control of the situation. It was the last time
any of Miller's team saw him alive.
"I think he wanted to provide that extra firepower for
his buddies so they could get out of the kill zone,"
said Cusick. "He bounded forward; we moved back... he
saved lives that day. It was just in his personality and
got passed on from his former team leader and team
sergeant that he was a go-to guy, very reliable, very
eager and one of the better in-shape guys on the team
because of his gymnastics background."
A real gem
Cusick said Miller was always quick to volunteer and to
take on more responsibility, recalling his weapons
sergeant's last night when the team picked up the Afghan
soldiers: "As soon as I said we're good to go, he went
over and introduced himself to the Afghans, speaking
Pashto to get them up for the mission."
Aside from his physical capabilities, knowledge of
tactics, desire to speak Pashto fluently, Miller in his
off-time served as the detachment's resident gemologist,
the guy his teammates deferred to when they wanted to
make sure a gem was a good deal, added Cusick.
"After he was killed the team passed Robby's gem
detecting kit back to his family... that meant a lot to
them," Cusick said. "Many of the gems he'd brought,
others had been gifts and a kind way for the Afghans to
thank us."
Several of those gems have since been mounted, one of
which Miller's mother Maureen wears from a necklace,
while a few others were turned into earrings worn by his
sisters in memory of their oldest brother.
Brother in arms
While no one will ever know what Miller was truly,
absolutely thinking when all hell broke loose, Martin,
his teammates and the captain all believe what was going
through their buddy's head was complete and utter
concern for the team.
"I think we were all feeling concern for each other that
night," said Martin. "I think in combat the biggest fear
I have and I think the other guys have, is letting down
the guy to the left and right. It's not getting shot;
it's about doing the right thing and not letting our
brothers down."
Philip Miller, Robby's father, said his wife, three
other sons and four daughters knew a large part of
Robby's responsibility was working and training with
local nationals, and heard about some of the day-to-day
activities. But the family didn't really hear too much
about combat actions, because Robby didn't want to worry
his family or divulge secrets about what he was doing
specifically.
Between deployments at his parent's home in Ovieda,
Fla., he would share photographs and video clips with
his family - he loved the scenery of Afghanistan and
talked about his passion for learning Pashto and sipping
tea and interacting with the Afghans.
"He was enthusiastic about his involvement and what was
going on in the country," his father remembered. "We're
very, very proud and somewhat humbled, but very
appreciative of those kind words we heard about our
son's actions in Afghanistan, but it's more than that,
it's the pride and satisfaction that one of your
children did something so remarkable.
Historic moment
"All of us wonder if we can perform the same way and
keep our head and do what we have to do in an extreme
situation like that and take a calculated risk that you
know you'll have to take and which may mean you won't
survive," he said. "You start to look at all the stories
of what people do, including the people in this same
firefight and then you realize how remarkable it is that
they're keeping their heads under incredible, intense,
dangerous conditions and doing the right thing - it's
amazing to imagine anybody could behave like that.
"I'd like everybody to remember that he loved what he
was doing and he was very good at it; he was extremely
enthusiastic about it and it was very clear he really
embraced the work, the mission and the people he worked
with, American and Afghan," Miller's father said.
"When we learned about the details of what Robby had
done to receive the Medal of Honor nomination, we
weren't surprised and we also weren't surprised at his
reaction (in the field), because that was the sort of
person he was, that's what his training taught him to do
and be," said Miller's mother Maureen. "I think the fact
that he died doing something that he loved and thought
was worthwhile was an important factor in helping us
deal with the situation."
"Rob always wanted to be a Soldier. I think there are
several factors that influenced him to join the Army -
one was his sense of adventure, another one was his
sense of the importance of military service, it's
something that runs in our family," she added. "Another
important factor was Rob's sense of appreciation for the
freedom and opportunity that we have in this country --
something he learned after hearing the stories when he
was 8 or 9 of some friends who were Cambodian refugees."
"Being a stand-in and receiving the Medal of Honor on
behalf of our son is obviously extremely important to us
because it represents the gratitude of the country to
one of their Soldiers who performed so well and
effectively in combat," added Miller's father, who was
also a Soldier. "Our son will become part of the written
history of the United States." |
