Anchorage Daily News

The Fort Richardson soldier who held off suspected Iranian-backed militants during a brazen attack in Iraq last year was decorated with a Silver Star for gallantry Friday in Anchorage.

Click to enlarge

Graphic: Inside the Karbala attack

Story tools

Comments

E-mail a friend

Print

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Font size : A | A | A

Sgt. 1st Class Sean Bennett, 33, earned the Army's third-highest award on Jan. 20, 2007, during a highly coordinated attack against U.S. troops on duty at the provincial capital of Karbala, a major Shiite holy city south of Baghdad.

The commander of the Army in Alaska, Maj. Gen. Stephen Layfield, said Bennett brought honor to himself and his unit by his swift reactions in blocking militants from seizing or destroying the communications and control room in their compound headquarters. Then, though seriously wounded, Bennett got in touch with his headquarters command to report the surprise attack, then helped plan the evacuation of the other injured soldiers, Layfield said.

"Sgt. 1st Class Bennett took initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders," Layfield said, reading from the citation. That was a soldier's true creed in battle, Layfield said.

Bennett, a paratrooper from the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) of the 25th Infantry Division, was assigned to a room that functioned as a communications center and bunkhouse for four or five soldiers when the militants, dressed in American uniforms, burst into the provincial building. The militants arrived in SUVs like the ones used by private military contractors and either bluffed their way past Iraqi-manned checkpoints or had inside help from supposed coalition allies, according to a subsequent Army investigation.

They attempted to force their way through the door of the communications room, but Bennett pressed back. When one of the militants poked the muzzle of an AK-47 assault rifle through the small opening in the door, Bennett grabbed it and attempted to direct its fire away from the other soldiers, according to his account and those of the other survivors.

A militant tossed a grenade into the room. One of the other soldiers, Pfc. Johnathon Millican, either jumped or fell on the grenade, absorbing the brunt of its force. Millican earlier was awarded a Silver Star posthumously.

Staff Sgt. Billy Wallace, another one of the soldiers in the room, said Friday after the award presentation that whatever led Millican to smother the grenade, he saved the lives of the others.

Bennett lost a chunk of his left biceps, either from rifle fire or the grenade, and suffered severe burns from the hot rifle muzzle. Yet he continued to hold back the door until the militants detonated a charge in the hallway as they fled, then he communicated what had happened to his commanders back on base and helped organize the medical evacuation of the wounded, according to the award citation.

Bennett was among the 3,500 soldiers of the Fort Richardson airborne brigade to arrive in Iraq for a 12-month tour in October 2006.

The brigade was at the center of two of the most notable battles of the post-invasion period, which accounted for all three of its Silver Stars: The Jan. 20 attack at Karbala, in which five U.S. soldiers died, and a battle against a doomsday cult near the holy city of Najaf eight days later. The brigade's third Silver Star honoree, Master Sgt. Thomas Ballard, helped lead a team that protected an Apache helicopter shot down in the Najaf attack while under fierce fire themselves.

After those battles, the U.S. Army's surge into Baghdad pushed militants south into the brigade's combat area, leading to an increase in attacks just as the soldiers learned their tour of duty was being extended to 14 months.

In all, 53 members of the brigade died during the deployment with another 345 injured.

Bennett, a member of the 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, was assigned to a civil affairs group training police and other provincial personnel in the Karbala area. They were joined by a detachment of military police from a U.S. base in Germany.

In an interview Friday, Bennett said the first indication they were under attack was the sound of gunfire, then shouting in the hallway in Arabic.

The militants appeared to be bent on taking American hostages, perhaps as trade bait for Iranians seized earlier by U.S. forces. They wounded then seized the first two Fort Richardson soldiers they encountered, Spc. Johnathan Chism and Pfc. Shawn Falter, who were guarding the provincial building. They attacked the room next to Bennett's, where two officers were staying: platoon leader Lt. Jacob Fritz, a popular soldier among his men and the Iraqis, and Capt. Brian Freeman, a Californian assigned to the 412 Civil Affairs Battalion of Whitehall, Ohio. Fritz and Freeman were also captured.

Hours later, the four abductees would be found when the militants abandoned their vehicles near an unexpected roadblock. Three were dead from gunshot wounds. The fourth died later at a hospital.

Bennett said he didn't have time to think -- he just reacted when he realized the people outside the door were hostile. Quick reactions came natural to him, he said: He caught snakes as a kid in the South and played third base -- the hot corner -- for Cameron University in Lawton, Okla. Bennett noted that his most severe injury was to his glove hand, not his throwing arm, and that he planned to resume playing ball.

Several hundred soldiers cheered Bennett. Among them was his wife, Spc. Betina Bennett of Fort Lewis, Wash. She's a physical therapist and expects a transfer to Fort Richardson in a few months. Bennett's mother, Chris Bella, of Gibsonville, N.C., was also there.

Bennett grew up in Texas and North Carolina but lists Elgin, Okla., as his hometown. He's a 14-year veteran who said he plans to remain in the Army for 20 years and expects to be recovered enough to return to combat duty if his unit returns to the war zone.

Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.

ADVERTISEMENT