When members of a Pennsylvania National Guard platoon discovered fellow soldiers nearly drowning in a rushing river during a training exercise at Fort Pickett, Virginia, two brave souls leaped into the rushing water to perform daring rescues.
Very soon, it became clear a Plan B was in order.
"My first instinct is, 'I can swim, I can help them,'" said 1st Lt. Ryan Norris, leader that day of 3rd Platoon, Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 110th Infantry Division. "I dive in, [the current] took me 100 meters downstream ... so we thought of a different course of action."
Norris got help back to shore, as did Staff Sgt. Jon Dunham, who'd made a similar unsuccessful effort. The platoon hastily designed a human rescue rig using tow straps, eventually saving 10 Virginia National Guard members from a raging river, an after-effect of Tropical Storm Andrea.
Eighteen months later, a half-dozen members of the platoon received Soldier's Medals in a Jan. 10 ceremony at a Masonic Lodge in Hempfield, about a 40 minute drive east of Pittsburgh; an article on the ceremony appeared that day at TribLive.com. Dunham joined Sgt. 1st Class Sean Cartwright, Staff Sgt. Paul Johnson and Sgts. Sean Capets and John Kerr at the event, while Norris, attending a 12-week class for his civilian job at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Georgia, was unable to attend.
By June 8, 2013, the unit was a week into a two-week training session at Fort Pickett, one dampened significantly by Andrea, which caused flooding throughout the state and much of the Eastern Seaboard. That day, the platoon was charged with doing "route recon," Johnson recalled — "see what's passable, what's not."
![[ID=21863265]](/Portals/_default/Skins/PrestoLegacy/CommonCss/images/pullquote.jpg "Sgt. 1st Class Sean Cartwright [ID=21863265]")
The five-vehicle convoy rolled through muddy roads checking for downed trees, at one point passing three other vehicles before turning off to check another route. When the platoon drove down a hill to a spot where vehicles could — under other circumstances — ford a river running through the installation, they noticed the same vehicles, only one was missing, Johnson said.
Johnson and Norris were about to report the area as not passable when they and other platoon members heard screaming from a wood line. Dunham heard a soldier screaming from a nearby inlet and jumped in to rescue him. The current made that impossible, but his platoon-mates fished out his intended rescuee, then helped Dunham to safety.
They pulled out another soldier who'd been clinging to a branch to avoid being swept away by the current. And then they saw the bulk of the stranded force — seven troops standing on the trailer of their submerged Humvee, all but swallowed up by the river, mid-crossing.
There was yet another soldier clinging to a branch above the rushing water, but he could wait — the team wasn't clear exactly how the decision-making process went down, but Cartwright ran back to the vehicles and grabbed four tow straps.
Next came a makeshift rescue assembly line:
- Either Capets or Dunham would throw a tow strap toward the trailer, with those two and Kerr holding one end of the line.
- One of the trapped soldiers would grab the end of the strap, tie it around his waist, then jump into the water.
- The strong current made it impossible to haul the jumper directly to shore, so Norris, tethered by tow straps to Johnson and Cartwright, would catch the soldier being swept downstream.
- Everybody pull.
- Repeat.
"I think the lieutenant came up with the human-chain idea," said Cartwright, who deployed to Iraq in 2009. "It's not really in the manual, but if something needs to be done, you come up with the best plan for the situation."
All seven soldiers reached the riverbank. The platoon plucked the 10th stranded man off his tree branch, and within minutes, other units arrived to get the rescued soldiers further care and take of the submerged materiel ("We decided, we'll worry about that stuff later," recalled Johnson, who has deployed twice to Iraq).
Norris, who joined the Guard after an enlisted stint in the active-duty Navy that included an Iraq deployment, said the effort displayed the type of teamwork the Guard can foster, even if its members aren't together on a full-time basis.
"Everybody started working as a cohesive unit," said Norris, who joined the Guard after a stint in the active-duty Navy, including an individual-augmentee deployment to Iraq in 2008. "It was amazing. ... It gave me great, new-found respect for the National Guard."
The Soldier's Medal is given to service members who risk their lives in non-combat situations. Johnson said plans are in place to seek official recognition for other platoon members who served in support roles during the incident and provided aid to the rescued soldiers after they reached land — Spcs. Bruce Byler (now deceased), Michael Fenton, Zachary Kalish and Jordan Turowski.
Kevin Lilley is the features editor of Military Times.
