From Stars & Stripes (via Lance in Iraq):
On the eve of last November’s battle for Fallujah, Lt. Col. Peter Newell and Capt. Kirk Mayfield stood together on a rooftop at the edge of the city thinking about the fight to come.
The Germany-based Task Force 2-2 — led by Newell’s 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment and including Mayfield’s Troop F, 4th Cavalry Regiment as well as the 2nd Battalion, 63rd Armor Regiment — would join a Marine division in an assault on the city that had turned into Iraq’s nastiest nest of insurgents.
That night, Mayfield’s company rained artillery and mortar fire on an entrenched enemy platoon, the first skirmish in what was to be the biggest Iraq operation since the fall of Baghdad. For much of the next two weeks, he and his men were under fierce enemy fire.
Newell said he never doubted his troops would win the battle.
“It was [over] before the fight started,” he said. “It was just a matter of how long it was going to take.”
On Monday, six months after the battle, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey pinned some of the Army’s highest awards on Newell’s men for their victory at Fallujah. Newell accepted the Army’s highest unit honor, the Presidential Unit Citation, on behalf of the 2-2 Infantry.
Nine men earned Silver Stars for valor. Five of them — including Newell’s and his three company commanders’ — were for bravery at Fallujah. The medal presentation anchored a two-hour ceremony honoring the 1st Infantry Division for its yearlong tour in Iraq that ended in February.
Be sure to read the Silver Star citations starting near the halfway point of the article.
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