America's North Shore Journal

Silver Star, Purple Heart

Army Sgt. Gregory S. Ruske is quick to call himself an ordinary Soldier, but later this month the Army Reserve will single him out for extraordinary heroism in Afghanistan that earned him the Silver Star medal.

The 28-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., native will become the fourth Army reservist to receive the prestigious award for heroism in the war on terror. Army Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz, chief of the Army Reserve, will present Ruske the Silver Star during a ceremony in Orlando, Fla.

Ruske visited Washington yesterday to meet with Stultz and other Army Reserve officials and to attend the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting taking place here. He said he doesn’t see the actions he took when his platoon was attacked by a much larger Taliban force as anything exceptional.

“I don’t consider myself a hero,” he said. “I was just an ordinary guy put in an extraordinary situation. I reacted based on my upbringing, training and compassion, and thankfully, it worked out in the end.”

AMBUSH
Ruske was assigned to Combined Joint Task Force 101, operating in Afghanistan’s Kapisa province, when the incident that led to his Silver Star award took place, April 21, 2008. He and his fellow Soldiers from 3rd Platoon, A Company, Task Force Gladiator, were on a patrol in a remote area not accessible by vehicle when Taliban operatives attacked them with heavy grenade, machine-gun and rifle fire.

“There was no way our gun truck support could get to us, so we were kind of out here by ourselves when all Hades broke loose,” he said.

Trapped with his unit in an exposed position, Ruske returned fire so most of the platoon could move to protective cover. Ruske then moved to a rooftop and continued laying fire even after taking a bullet to the hip.

At that point, Ruske realized that two Afghan national police officers were still pinned down in the open, taking fire from their Taliban attackers. One ran for cover, but the other officer — one Ruske had worked with at vehicle checkpoints and chatted with through an interpreter – had been shot and was trying to crawl to safety through a hail of bullets.

A WOUNDED FELLOW SOLDIER
“Seeing that dirt kick up no more than six inches from his head, I said, ‘Man, this is jacked up,’” Ruske recalled thinking. “They are still shooting at this guy. He is still bleeding and shot. And I said, ‘We have to go get him.’”

Ruske said he didn’t take time to think about his own safety, but simply reacted to the training the Army had used to prepare him for combat.

Ruske credited his mentor during his three years of active duty, Sgt. 1st Class Glen Boucher, with instilling the discipline and skills that he drew on while under fire.

“He was fair, but if you stepped across that line, he would check you, and that was good,” Ruske said of his former squad leader, then a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle commander. “He could joke with you and mess around with you, but when it came down to work, it was time to work.”

A stickler for soldiering skills, Boucher taught Ruske tactics he said enabled him to assist the fallen Afghan police officer.

“He’s the one who taught me all the ins and outs of dismounted and mounted techniques, and actually it was the ‘Z’ pattern he taught me that I had my [squad automatic weapon] gunner do to suppress [enemy fire] and buy us a little time when they were shooting at us,” Ruske said.

THE RESCUE
Ruske ordered his SAW gunner, Spc. Walter Reed, to spray the enemy in a Z-shaped pattern, expending a whole box of 200 rounds to give Ruske and his buddy, Spc. Eric Seagraves, time to run out to retrieve the officer.

The two dodged bullets as they grabbed the Afghan police officer’s arms and dragged him toward a wall that provided protective covering.

Only when Ruske and Seagraves went to lift the man behind the wall did they realize that Ruske’s leg had been shattered.

Later that day, after Ruske was taken to Bagram Air Base to receive treatment for his gunshot wound, he checked on the Afghan officer and was relieved to see that he had survived and would keep both legs.

Almost six months later, Ruske said he finds it amazing that he will receive a Silver Star for his actions. “I still don’t really believe it,” he said. Ruske deflected attention from himself, emphasizing that he acted as part of a team.

“I had help the whole time. It’s not like it was just me,” he said. “None of it would have been possible without Reed [and] with the SAW and Seagraves helping me with the guy. It was the one plan that turned out all right.”

BACK TO CIVILIAN LIFE
Now back at his civilian job as a juvenile corrections officer in Denver, Ruske is awaiting his reassignment to a new Army Reserve unit because his former unit was deactivated. Once he gets his new assignment, he said, he hopes to be like the combat veterans within the Army Reserve who helped him get ready to deploy by sharing what they had learned about roadside bombs, search techniques and other combat techniques.

“I picked their brains, and they passed their experience and lessons learned to me,” Ruske said. “Now that I’m back, it’s my turn to pass on my knowledge and experience to some of the newer guys, just like the other guys did for me.”

DVIDS
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

“I don’t consider myself a hero,” said Army Resere Sgt. Gregory S. Ruske. “I was just an ordinary guy put in an extraordinary situation. I reacted based on my upbringing, training and compassion, and thankfully, it worked out in the end.”

That extraordinary situation and Ruske’s quick and decisive action would bring him the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor and gallantry in the face of the enemy. It was presented to him at a ceremony Thursday in Orlando, Fla., by Chief of the Army Reserve Lt. Gen. Jack C. Stultz.

Recalling April 12, 28-year-old Ruske from Colorado Springs, Colo., was on patrol with six Soldiers and two Afghan National Police officers in the Afghanya Valley, Kapisa Province, Afghanistan, when “all hades broke loose,” sending his fellow Soldiers to the ground in a shallow ditch. Ruske was serving with 3rd platoon, A company, Task Force Gladiator, Combined Task Force 101.

“I was pulling rear security when the opening barrage happened and that’s when the two ANP officers got hit because they were in the lead as our guides,” Ruske said. “I managed to get over to the corner of this little house and started lobbing M-203 grenades and returning fire with my rifle as well.”

Ruske’s fellow Soldiers were able to peel back and take cover behind the building. He thought if he could get access to the roof or a window he would have a better angle to see the enemy. After negotiating with the house’s owner, he made it to the roof when everything started exploding around him.

“Then I felt something, like a rubber band, hit me in the hip, so I fell to the roof, looked at my glove, which was covered in blood… at that point I decided the roof was not a good place to be, so I got myself off the roof,” he said.

After being treated with a field dressing, Ruske found one of the ANP officers who had been ambushed was still in the field about 50 meters from where he’d been ambushed. He had managed to crawl into a small ditch for cover, but the enemy was still laying down rounds.

“I grabbed my SAW (squad automatic weapon, an M-249 light machine gun) gunner and told him to give me a nice “z” pattern on the count of three and then just empty the entire drum, to suppress the enemy’s fire,” Ruske said.

He and another Solder then ran out, one grabbing the policeman’s arms, Ruske lifting his legs.

“I lifted his legs, not knowing that the round had hit him shattering his femur,” he said. “At this point he was screaming, but we managed to carry him into the compound and get a tourniquet on his leg, then we went back to fighting.”

After Ruske was medically evacuated and treated, he visited the police officer. His leg had been put back together, his other wounds treated and he was “good to go.”

Looking back on everything that occurred that day, Ruske remembered how his father had been in the Army during World War II, his stepdad in the Army in the chemical corps.

“I remember hearing my grandfather’s stories, the sense of pride and patriotism he had,” Ruske said. “You know, what’s a couple of years of my life for a country that has given me 28 years of pretty good living compared with what I’ve seen overseas.”

“The people there are a lot like us. They want to make some money, raise their families, live their lives and be happy,” he said.

As for the Silver Star he now wears for his heroic actions, Ruske remains humble.

“People in a much higher position than I made that decision, but it seems to me that I was smart enough to come up with a plan, stupid enough to try it and lucky enough to survive it,” he said. “It means I was doing my job.”

US Army