America's North Shore Journal

Staff Sgt. Michael E. Nor­ton awarded Sil­ver Star for actions in Afghanistan

A squad leader with the 75^th Ranger Reg­i­ment was awarded the Sil­ver Star for risk­ing who his life to save two fel­low Rangers in Afghanistan.

"Any Ranger would have done the same thing," said Staff Sgt. Michael E. Nor­ton of Alpha Com­pany, 3^rd Bat­tal­ion, 75^th Rangers. "The Ranger Creed says, 'I will never leave a fallen com­rade.' There was no moment of think­ing about what to do. I had to get my broth­ers and the most impor­tant thing in my mind was how hurt they were."

Nor­ton led his squad on an objec­tive, Aug. 4–5, to raid an enemy combatant's head­quar­ters camp in the moun­tains of north­west­ern Khowst Province in Afghanistan.

While mov­ing to the objec­tive, Nor­ton and one of his team lead­ers were alerted to pos­si­ble enemy com­bat­ants along the route and moved for­ward to assess the sit­u­a­tion. As Nor­ton and his team leader were attempt­ing to iden­tify the pos­si­ble enemy in the val­ley, a seven to nine man enemy ele­ment ini­ti­ated a com­plex, near ambush on Norton's squad from the high ground with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire from a posi­tion of 25 meters to the squad's front.

"The fire came from our 12 o'clock and then maybe a cou­ple of sec­onds later from our right and left," Nor­ton said.

Behind the first enemy rocket-propelled grenade team, a medium machine gun on ele­vated ground to the north­west engaged them with highly effec­tive fire. Two more enemy com­bat­ants were on the slope of the val­ley to the west, engaged the Ranger squad with an AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades along the long axis of their for­ma­tion, while another group of enemy fight­ers were on ele­vated ter­rain to the east, raked them with small arms fire from the rear of the Ranger squad formation.

The mul­ti­ple enemy posi­tions had effec­tively enveloped Norton's squad from mul­ti­ple direc­tions at a dis­tance of 25 to 50 meters, leav­ing Nor­ton and his ele­ment pinned to the floor of the val­ley by the intense and accu­rate small arms fire.

The val­ley left no room for maneu­ver; Nor­ton, his squad and the machine gun team ele­ment behind them imme­di­ately returned fire, but they were unable to gain fire supe­ri­or­ity over the well-established enemy.

After the sec­ond rocket-propelled grenades knocked two of his Rangers tem­porar­ily uncon­scious and blasted the rest of his squad with shrap­nel and debris and real­iz­ing his ele­ment could not gain fire supe­ri­or­ity, Nor­ton shouted for his squad to break contact.

When Nor­ton real­ized that two Rangers had not got­ten up and were still exposed to the heavy vol­ume of enemy fire from the high ground to the east and west, and with com­plete dis­re­gard for his own safety, Nor­ton turned around and with marked dis­tinc­tion, pur­pose­fully charged back into the inter­lock­ing fire of the enemy ambush kill zone in order to recover his downed Rangers.

"The exam­ple of per­sonal courage that Staff Sergeant Nor­ton showed, to get his men out of the kill zone is a tes­ta­ment to his char­ac­ter," said Maj. Keith Carter, A Com­pany com­man­der. "NCOs such as Staff Sergeant Nor­ton are the rea­son I wanted to serve in the 75^th Ranger Reg­i­ment, and it is an honor to lead them."

With­out hes­i­ta­tion, Nor­ton dove down into the midst of enemy fire with his uncon­scious com­rades, uncer­tain of their status.

"There was noth­ing fancy going on in my head besides hop­ing they weren't dead," said Norton.

While the rest of the ele­ment attempted to sup­press the enemy, and lying next to the Rangers, Nor­ton "started shak­ing and yelling as qui­etly as I could."

After reviv­ing his Rangers, Nor­ton led them back to cover through the hail of direct fire and rocket-propelled grenade strikes, sav­ing their lives and bring­ing his entire squad out of the enemy onslaught intact.

"I'm proud of the actions of my squad, because we con­tin­ued the mis­sion after that," said Nor­ton. "It was just two min­utes out of our over­all mission."

As his pla­toon fought off the enemy ambush with direct fire, mor­tars and close air sup­port, Nor­ton quickly assessed his casu­al­ties and reor­ga­nized his squad to return to the fight.

Nor­ton con­tin­ued lead­ing his squad in the follow-on assaults through two more direct fire con­tacts, killing two enemy combatants.

"We receive a lot of great train­ing here at 3^rd Ranger Bat­tal­ion and I was just act­ing on instinct," said Norton.

The train­ing con­ducted by Rangers means every­thing on the battlefield.

"The goal of the com­pany and bat­tal­ion is to cre­ate the most real­is­tic sce­nar­ios pos­si­ble while min­i­miz­ing risk," Carter said. We con­stantly inte­grate new enemy tac­tics from over­seas into our train­ing so that we are ready in any situation."

The over­all assault force killed 20 enemy fight­ers, destroyed two enemy anti-aircraft guns and sev­eral other weapons, explo­sives and mil­i­tary sup­plies on the objec­tive result­ing in the dis­rup­tion of a major enemy head­quar­ters and encampment.

Nor­ton joined the Army from his home­town of Pen­sacola, Fla., June 2004, after grad­u­at­ing from West High­land Chris­t­ian Acad­emy and has deployed six times in sup­port of oper­a­tions Endur­ing and Iraqi Free­dom. He is the son of Jimmy and Deb­o­rah Nor­ton of Holly, Mich.

U.S. Army