Warrant officer gets Silver Star down range - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Warrant officer gets Silver Star down range

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — A Marine warrant officer received the Silver Star on July 15 during a short ceremony in Afghanistan, attended by the top Marine Corps leaders in the region, including Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, commander of Regional Command-Southwest, and Brig. Gen. Charles Hudson, commander of 1st Marine Logistics Group.

On Feb. 26, 2008, then-Staff Sgt. John W. Hermann, an explosive ordnance disposal technician, accompanied a team with Company B, 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, on a combat reconnaissance patrol through Dahaneh, a village in southern Afghanistan held by Taliban forces.

While on the patrol, the team came under a barrage of fire from rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, machine guns and small-arms fire. Hermann, according to the award citation, jumped out of his vehicle with another Marine and ran toward a group of entrenched fighters.

When the other Marine was hit in the leg by automatic fire, Hermann continued moving over open terrain and into the enemy trench line.

“He single-handedly destroyed the enemy assailants and then crossed back through the machine gun fire of another enemy position in order to treat his fallen comrade,” his citation states.

Hermann was hit in the leg by some shrapnel from an RPG, ignored the injury, and instead put a tourniquet on the wounded Marine’s leg. Then Hermann “moved forward and silenced the remaining enemy machine gun,” the citation states.

But he wasn’t done. Hermann organized the Marines to establish a security cordon and clear out any enemy forces.

When it was over, 13 enemy fighters were killed.

After that deployment, Hermann was promoted to gunnery sergeant and appointed as a warrant officer.

Hermann, now assigned to the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st MLG, seems humbled by the recognition and attention.

“It was just one of those days the Taliban wanted to fight,” he told a Defense Department reporter in Afghanistan.

“The performance of the Marines was beyond what anybody could imagine … One hundred times better than what anyone could have expected,” he said. “Everything they did was meticulous and with a purpose.”

“It was a team. It wasn’t one person,” he added. “None of this would have happened if it wasn’t a team.”

Two Bronze Stars with V awarded