What was your proudest "military moment?"

Making Chief Petty Officer!

I think for my mom it was the day before I graduated basic. She came to lackland and the first time she saw me was the airmans run. She cried when she came to hug me out of formation after the coin ceremony. It was beautiful.

For me, my proudest moment so far, as it's only been a year and a half, was the day I graduated tech school. That day I got to wear my new stripes for the first time, it made me so happy. I waited months for those stripes.

One of my sons went to college on an ROTC Scholarship. Because I had been an NCO, he asked me if I would give him his first salute at his commissioning. Proudest moment of my life.

It was when my training, skill, and valor all came together as one in a rescue I performed. Although not recognized, I know what I did to save two men from possible death.

A diesel tanker jackknifed and rolled on a narrow two-lane mountain curve. I saw it coming and stopped my loaded bus short and pulled to the shoulder. The driver was partially ejected during the rollover. The wreckage stopped just 50 feet in front of me and diesel was flowing out of the tanks like a river.

I backed the bus away to a safe distance and threw on my school bus warning flashers. I jumped out and ran to the wreck, shin deep in diesel fuel. With help from a couple others on the bus, we extracted the two men inside the cab. I treated the men for trauma and we flagged down a scout helicopter to radio for help. (No cell phones back then.) CHP and emergency crews eventually responded.

Still made my run to Ft. Ord after going back to the barracks to clean up.

It will be in 37 days, when I rotate out of BN command.

This may be long winded, sorry.

I was in the Honor Guard in western NY and I was damn proud, but my proudest moment in the Army also happens to be one of my more embarrassing (not most embarrassing) fuck ups (pardon my french, but it was).  Let me set the scene for you.

It is late in 2004, and SPC Morehouse is an automatic riflemen currently at the RPC palace complex just around the corner from Baghdad Airport.  My unit was running security for the special peoples that operated out of there, patrolling the local village type places and chasing down mortars and such.  While operating there we got a tip of some possible bad people living in this house inside our AO, and SPC Morehouse is about to go on his very first raid, Hooaa!

Now the plan was, just as the sun was coming in our company would roll in on this house out in the middle of no where from all directions, our hummers would roll in right up to the front door, my platoon would all spill out, line up, and go in.  Before that, my team leader and I where charged with reconing the house, to ensure nothing changed between night fall and when our guys where going to be rolling up.  Man I thought I was hot shit, crawling around with my SAW and my NVG's, my team leader had a thermal scope, and we skulked around that place for about an hour, and then right before sun up did another sweep, krept right up to the building and checked the entry point to make sure it was clear.  All was good to go.

Since no plan survives, well, damn near anything, moments after sun up my company XO's hummer comes rolling up to us, and he's shouting "Where the F is so and so" .  Man I just wanted to scream at him to shut his flippin mouth and get the F out of here.  I didn't of course, because he was the 1st lt and I a lowly SPC.  I thought he was going to blow the whole thing, but I think he eventually figured out where he was and drove off.  Moments later the rest of our guys came pulling in fast, poored out of the hummers and lined up at the door.

I was the # 3 guy in the stack.  we went in.  Now we spent the last couple days going over how to say "Lay down on the ground" in arabic.  I swear though, when we went in, all you could hear is a dozen 11B all screaming "Get on the fucking ground!"  (this came up as an 'improve' later on in our AAR)

We took the first room, grabbed a bunch of guys and gals, and I stayed in that first room as part of the security force there.  My squad leader threw me some guy and told me to cuff him and put him against the wall with the others.

Now here is SPC Morehouse, all hopped up on adrenalin and in the moment.  I grab a pair of flex cuffs hanging off my body armor, grab the guys hands, zip zip, and toss him against the wall.  We start to collect the others from being sent our way as the rest of our guys continue clearing the building.  We take it without a shot fired, and it looks to be a grand total of like 5 families living in this place. 

Eventually, standing guard over the men, I notice the guy I cuffed wiggling and hopping around on the balls of his feet as he is crouched over against the wall.  He looks like he has to pee or something.  (I promise, the proud moment is coming).

It turns out, when I zipped him up, I had put the cuffs on waaaaaaaaaay too tight.  I looked at the guys hands and they where a pretty deep purple, and his little pee dance was accompanied by a tormented look of pain on his face.  I told my swuad leader and he came over and had the guy get up so we could get the cuffs off.  He couldn't, so second squad leader tried.  No go.  Now I'm thinking "oh shit, I hope this guys a bad guy because I might have just cost him his hands".  It didn't come to all that fo course, because my squad leader wiped out his gerber and just sawed the things off.  Man did that guy look relieved, and the color started slowly to fill back into his hands.  At this time my squad leader relieved me of securing the prisoners, and I went outside and got on my gun in my hmmwv.  I spent the rest of the search (we where looking for weapons caches) manning my gun, and feeling pretty horrible about messing up the guys hands, even if it did end up all right. 

So we searched these peoples house for 2 hours.  It got pretty well torn apart.  I mean every piece of clothing, furnature, rugs, we swept the yard, dug up some patchs in their little stable/goat fence thing, the works.  We didn't find a thing.  Turns out one of the heads of the family was actually an Iraqi police force officer.  They where frikin on our side! 

Towards the end of the search, I notice the guy I cuffed standing at the door I had checked just that morning.  The door to his house, that I invaded, woke his kids, cuffed him and tossed him against a wall, and made his hands turn a color no human being has any business being.  He was standin at the door watching me, and next to him was a little boy, maybe 7 or 8.  He had his hand on the boys soldier, and I couldn't make out the look on his face but he said something to the boy and pointed at me.

The boy came running up to the hmmwv, and said in that way anyone who spent any time patrolling those villages knows "mista mista" and then he tossed me something, and ran back to his dad.  I caught it and took a look.  It was a ripe, red apple.  It had a little bruise on one side.  I looked back at the man and his boy, he waved to me and went back inside.

A little while later I saw my team leader come out the front door talking to the man.  They spoke for another few minutes, then my team leader came back to the vehicle and told me we where packing it up.  I crouched down, curious what the guy had said and told me team leader "Well they took that pretty well".

This is what my team leader told me.  He said, "Yeah, well that guy you cuffed told me they are just so happy we didn't kill them.  That his son there with him, and he said that back before we got here, if the Republican Guard had received the kind of tip we got, they would have come and killed them all and then searched the house."

I didn't say anything.  I just stood back up and manned my gun.  The guy was out there again, in front of the house with a bunch of other people from the other families.  He waved and did a bunch of others, and all the kids.  They shouted good buys and farewells.  I waved back.  I still had a hard time processing what I had just heard.

here we came in, rolled up just at sun up.  Came into their house.  Separated them from their women and children, and then ransacked the place.  All because we got a half way credible tip that they had a weapons stock for local insurgents.  And they where grateful.  Grateful to us.  Grateful to ME.  Because the status quo before we got there would have had them all dead before they where found to be innocent.

It was one of the many culture shocks I received in Iraq, but I remember coming away from that raid feeling very proud to be an American soldier.  Because for the first time I actually got to see that me, and those wearing the uniform with me, WHERE making a big difference in the world.  God I wish I could have kept the apple frozen in time.  I would place it higher then any of my medals, my campaign ribbon, or my CIB. 

I gave a year of my life in Iraq, but I helped take a little evil out of the world.  I still can't believe what kind of world they must have lived in, but I was then, and am still today, damn proud I was part of changing it.

The day I got my DD-214 that says honorable.

My proudest moment was after an extended deployment my CSM singled me out in front of my whole company to give me his coin. It was completely unexpected and as a young Specialist I was almost in tears. Ah good times!

Mar 13 2004... The day I brought my whole company back from Iraq alive... It was a transportation company POL... We only had 5 wounded and no dead. If you think that is easy... Stop and think about it. On that day I realized that there were a number of former 1SGs of mine that id probably had made very proud. Not to mention the families of the soldier's.