[Vision2020] Idaho Lawmakers Seek Medal of Honor for Wounded Veteran

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Military Times at:

http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2012/03/ap-idaho-lawmakers-seek-honor-for-injured-veteran-030312/

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Idaho lawmakers seek MoH for wounded veteran

MERIDIAN, Idaho — In May 2005, Army Sgt. Chris Tschida stood at the gate of a small U.S. military station in war-torn Iraq, gravely injured, losing blood by the pint and slipping into shock.

His left hand had been blown off by a grenade, his jaw shattered. A small price, he thought, for the lives of three fellow soldiers.

His actions that day nearly resulted in his death. He was later awarded a Purple Heart.

But according to Idaho’s legislature, congressional delegation and governor, Tschida’s deeds merit more official recognition, perhaps even a Medal of Honor.

They’re working now to make that happen.

Tschida, 32, was born in Caldwell and grew up just across the Oregon border in Jordan Valley — a hamlet where most people are related and no one is allowed secrets.

Tschida was shy and kept to himself. He played football, painted and ran fast. He took advantage of the landscape and the wildlife, spending hours fishing.

After graduating from Jordan Valley High School in 1999, Tschida idled a while. He dabbled in art classes at Boise State University and wondered how he could forge a life of purpose. That struggle led him to the Army recruiter in Boise.

After enlisting, Tschida languished in Texas for a few years, until he got fed up with boredom and sticky weather. He asked for a transfer to Korea and got it the next day.

Tschida found his rhythm in the Far East.

He was the best tank gunner in his company — deadly accurate and confident in his skills. He was so good, he trained newly minted officers in the ways of tank battle.

He also found his wife, Elena.

Russian by birth, Elena was in South Korea visiting friends who ran a video store that specialized in bootlegged blockbusters.

Tschida was a regular customer. One day, he spotted a raven-haired and exotic beauty.

He taught her a few words in English. They’d been dating a few weeks when she joked in broken English, “We should get married.”

“OK,” Tschida replied.

“Why not?” Elena thought. “He’s cute.”

The couple arranged a quickie wedding. “We’ll give it a while, see if it works,” Tschida remembers saying.

Eight years later, Chris and Elena, now 31, have two children — Brendan, 7, and Annastacia, 4.

Soon after the wedding, Tschida’s tank company was deployed to Iraq. The mission: guarding a busy supply route between Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq’s dangerous Anbar province.

In 2005, Anbar was a nest of insurgent violence. American casualties mounted from roadside bombs and coordinated ambushes.

On May 15, 2005, Tschida was gunner in a four-man M1A1 Abrams tank crew commanded by Lt. James P. Allen.

They were watching the road about 1,000 yards from Forward Operating Base Manhattan. Tschida was inside, scanning for insurgents or anything else suspicious.

The loader knocked his water bottle into the tank’s belly. When he jumped down to grab it, an insurgent threw two fragmentation grenades through the open hatch.

Tschida heard two thumps, then saw a grenade two feet away.

He acted without thinking. He yelled “grenade” and grabbed it with his left hand. He reached to get it into the gun breach, away from his crew.

It exploded in his hand.

The second grenade detonated under the commander’s steel footrest.

Jagged shrapnel, smoke, fire and blood filled the tank.

“I thought ‘What the hell happened,’” Tschida said. “I started feeling my body to see if I was in one piece. I didn’t realize my hand was gone.”

He reached to pull himself up and trigger the radio — it was blown away — then saw his hand was missing.

Tschida wrapped his bleeding arm in the bottom of his shirt and held it to his stomach. He looked for his tank mates.

The loader was dangling from the turret, his legs shredded by shrapnel. Allen was slumped over, bleeding from his eye and from massive wounds to his left leg.

“I thought he was dead,” Tschida said.

But when he pushed him, the lieutenant fell and gasped.

Tschida climbed out of the burning tank, then helped his comrades out the hatches. He pulled Allen out by his flak vest.

Chris Tschida is not a large man — “150 pounds, soaking wet,” says Idaho Rep. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian. How could he lift his fellow soldiers out of that tank?

“Adrenaline and the will to live,” Tschida said.

On the top of the tank, Tschida put tourniquets on the loader’s mangled legs and stuffed gauze into Allen’s eye socket. He dropped back into the tank. All communications had been knocked out. He set off smoke grenades to signal for help. Then he climbed back up top.

Tschida saw a man watching from across the road. He took a black mask off and headed toward the tank. With his good hand, Tschida took out his 9 mm pistol and fired three rounds, killing the insurgent. “He knew he could get us,” Tschida said. “We were not safe. We were injured and we had no [communications].”

The tank’s driver had been in a separate compartment. He was uninjured but stunned, and screaming for Tschida. Tschida told him to head back to base — fast.

Still feeling no pain, Tschida helped Allen and the loader from the turret onto the tank’s front ramp, using his body to shield them from bullets, explosions and from falling off.

With no way to signal the base that they were in trouble, Tschida took off his shoes and kicked his white-socked feet — a desperate SOS.

“Thank goodness they didn’t shoot us,” he said.

The tank crashed through the gate, the turret hitting the guard tower.

Tschida’s helmet was still on his head — stuck there with a piece of shrapnel that had gone into his skull.

“I ripped it out,” Tschida said. “I freaked out the driver.”

Inside the FOB, he radioed his commanders, reporting the attack. Tschida didn’t know it, but those commanders launched a massive response. They later found that insurgents had set up the ambush.

A medic wrapped his three dangling fingers and bloody arm in gauze. When Tschida finally stood up, he felt himself fading from blood loss and shock. He wasn’t scared. He didn’t feel any pain. But he felt death coming. “This is it. I’m done,” he thought. “‘At least I got these guys to safety.’“

He also felt peace. “Everything is really bright. The colors change. You only feel emptiness, and then you see everything in life that is good.”

He was back in Jordan Valley, fishing along the Owyhee River. He saw the faces of his wife, his infant son. That was the jolt he needed; he didn’t want to die.

He demanded sugar water from the medics, to keep him going despite massive blood loss.

A Humvee took him to the aid station a mile away. That’s when the pain kicked in. Every bump and turn was agony. At the station, medics waited with a gurney.

“I said, ‘I want to walk in,’” Tschida said.

The next few weeks were a blur of medicine and pain and ambulances and aircraft. He woke up at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He saw Elena and baby Brendan. He was given a Purple Heart.

Soon he was transferred to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, for a lengthy recovery. He took a medical retirement from the military when he could no longer work as a tank gunner. Tschida and his wife longed for family and cooler weather and came to Boise two years ago. Officials found Tschida a job at the Veterans Administration as a claims assistant.

Allen, the tank’s commander, submitted nominations for a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with Valor.

“Both nominations were rejected for unknown reasons,” Allen wrote for the packet the Idaho Legislature is sending Congress. “To this day Sgt. Tschida has not been awarded or recognized for his actions that day.”

It took some time before Tschida would talk about the incident that took his hand.

“To me, the loss of the hand was worth more than the loss of three people in body bags,” he said.

He still deals with chronic pain, post-traumatic stress and the effects of traumatic brain injury. He still has bits of shrapnel in his body and suffers debilitating headaches.

“I always tell him he’s a hero for me,” Elena Tschida said. “I tell my kids he’s a hero.”

Today, Tschida frankly discusses his physical injuries and the grenade attack, but there are things he won’t share with someone who isn’t a soldier.

“When you are with him, hanging out, he’s like a normal guy,” said Hagedorn, a veteran who got to know Tschida through a group for wounded veterans. “There are some people who think they are heroes and act like they are. Then there are special people who act normal, and that is what Chris is.”

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Chris Tschida, 32, lost his left arm while serving in Iraq in 2005. The congressional delegation and Idaho Gov. Otter are attempting to get Tschida the recognition he deserves and want him to receive the Medal of Honor.


 
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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown


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