Staff Sgt. John Wayne Walding, Special Forces sniper instructor. Photo by David Chace

John Wayne has toured Afghanistan and Iraq, hunted grizzly bears in Alaska and earned the Silver Star; and as of July 16, John Wayne is the first one-legged soldier to graduate the Special Forces Sniper Course.

Staff Sgt. John Wayne Walding of Groesbeck, Texas, that is.

In April 2008, Walding and nine other Special Forces soldiers from a 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) assault team were attacked by the Hezeb Islami al Gulbadin while searching for insurgents in Afghanistan’s Shok Valley.

Walding, one of several team members who were injured, took a bullet through his right leg under his knee.

“I ripped off my boot lace and literally tied my leg to my thigh to keep it from flapping around,” Walding said.

Over the six-and-a-half hour firefight, more than 150 insurgents were killed. The members of the assault team were each awarded the Silver Star in December 2008 for their courageous actions in Shok Valley.

While recuperating, Walding worked as an assistant instructor at 3rd SFG(A)’s sniper detachment at Fort Bragg. In order to become a full-time instructor, he had to complete the Special Forces Sniper Course at SWCS.

During the course, many of Walding’s classmates didn’t know about his injury and prosthetic leg. Walding said he enjoyed his fellow soldiers’ reactions upon learning about his missing leg.

“At first, [my classmates] were shocked to realize I was missing a leg,” Walding said. “Then, they realized ‘Wow, he’s doing everything I’m doing!’”

After his injury, Walding knew he wasn’t going to give up and leave the Army. He also didn’t want to spend the rest of his career behind a desk.

“You don’t become a Green Beret because you ‘kind of like it,’ you become a Green Beret because you love it, and can’t imagine being anything else,” he said.

Walding said he refused to lower his personal standards following his injury, and pushed himself to excel as an instructor because he knew teams and soldiers were relying on him. Due to his past experiences, Walding said he has a lot to offer as a member of a Special Forces team, and wouldn’t bother trying to get back to a team if he hadn’t felt he could be an asset.

The seven-week Special Forces Sniper Course teaches sniper marksmanship, semiautomatic shooting, ballistics theory and tactical movement. Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Owens, an SFSC instructor in 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne), emphasized the importance of these skills, and said it takes soldiers like Walding to push themselves to the limits.

“Snipers have become more dynamic over the past 10 years,” Owens said. “Considering current operations overseas, snipers have never been more prevalent, because of the need for distance shooting in rugged terrain.”

Walding said he loves everything about training to be a sniper, particularly the mission, the guns and the skill. He even enjoyed training during the hottest June ever recorded in North Carolina.

“The skill of a Special Forces sniper is unparalleled,” Walding said. “This is the most prestigious sniper school in the world. That means something.”

“There was never a doubt that Walding would do well in this course,” Owens said. “He is extremely motivated, and that never dropped during the course.”

“He never asked for special treatment; he did the same training as everyone else, and scored well in all the exercises.”

Walding’s no-quit attitude has taken him from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington back to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he’s become the first amputee to graduate from the Special Forces Sniper Course.

During his initial recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Walding set up short-term goals for himself. He was a runner before the incident, averaging 50 miles per week. During recovery, he would get up and run a little more every day, always keeping his focus on that next step.

Walding is using the same process to work his way back to an operational role. As a soldier, his first step was to finish the sniper course; the next step is acting as an instructor for his fellow soldiers. He said he’s hoping to work his way back to a place on an operational Special Forces detachment.

“I’m John Wayne, born on the Fourth of July. This is what I was meant to do.” Walding said.

DVIDS
Story by Caroline Goins

Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark A. Wanner sits at Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s desk prior to a Feb. 6, 2010, Silver Star Medal award ceremony in the Ohio Statehouse atrium. Also pictured with Wanner and Strickland, left, are Army Maj. Gen. Gregory L. Wayt, right, Ohio adjutant general, and Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton. Wanner received the medal for heroic actions that saved Clifton’s life during an operation in eastern Afghanistan on May 31, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ryan Cleary

Army Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wanner prefers to be referred to as a soldier, not as a hero. But he graciously humors those who insist on the latter.

On Feb. 6, the Ohio Army National Guard Special Forces medical sergeant stood unassumingly on a stage in the Ohio Statehouse atrium here to receive the Silver Star Medal — the nation’s third-highest medal for valor in combat.

Despite the season’s worst snowstorm, several hundred people, including his fellow Green Berets from the Columbus-based Company B, 2nd Battalion of the Army National Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group, traveled to Central Ohio to attend the event honoring Wanner for his actions in Afghanistan during a firefight in May when he saved the life of a fellow Green Beret.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Army Maj. Gen. Gregory L. Wayt, the adjutant general of Ohio, were on hand to present Wanner with the medal. It is the first such award for an Ohio National Guard member since the Korean War.

“We are in the presence of greatness today,” Strickland said. “Many people live their entire lives wondering if they’ve made a difference. But Sergeant 1st Class Mark Wanner never has to worry about that, does he?”

Fighting back tears, Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton recounted the day he almost lost his life after being shot multiple times during a raid on a Taliban compound in eastern Afghanistan.

“I’m standing here today, alive, because of the heroic and competent actions Mark performed on the night of May 31, 2009 — Memorial Day,” Clifton said.

The previous week, Clifton and his team had received word that a known Taliban leader soon would be meeting with about a half dozen Taliban fighters in a nearby village.

After waiting for five days with what Wanner referred to as “tactical patience,” the team received word that their target was in position. It had been training with their Afghan counterparts for nearly five months, and the plan was to allow the Afghans to take the lead and for the U.S. soldiers to follow closely behind.

But when the team approached the village, the Afghans already were in trouble, and the situation was deteriorating quickly. They had expected five or six Taliban fighters, but there were at least 30. They reacted immediately.

“I led some guys into a doorway, and that just happened to be the room that had 80 percent of the threat,” Clifton said. “I knew something wasn’t quite right. Then I got hit.”

Clifton had taken at least four rounds. The first entered his pelvis just below his body armor, the second hit the chest plate of his body armor, the third shattered his left forearm, and the last round hit his helmet, knocking off his night-vision goggles.

When he saw his injured arm and realized his rifle had dropped in front of him, Clifton knew he was in trouble.

He headed back out and almost immediately ran into Army Sgt. 1st Class Matt Scheaffer, a team medic. Wanner, the team’s senior medic, realized Clifton was hit and immediately ran to assist Scheaffer.

Rounds splashed the ground around them as they began working on their wounded comrade. Realizing the danger to their patient, they quickly dragged him around to what they assumed was the safer side of the building.

As the two medics continued to work on Clifton, Wanner began to realize the extent of his patient’s wounds. Wanner knew they couldn’t move Clifton unless they had a stretcher, so he ran to the vehicle to retrieve one. As the medic returned, the group began receiving fire from a window about 15 feet away, forcing them to press up against the wall of the building.

As he continued to work on Clifton, Wanner coordinated suppressing fire on the window and told Scheaffer to grab a fragmentation grenade.

Wanner kept on the back of his body armor and tossed the grenade into the room from which they were taking fire. The tactic worked. It subdued the enemy long enough to allow the medics to race Clifton to a vehicle for evacuation.

Wanner continued to provide life-saving care as they bounced across the desert to a medical evacuation site, avoiding the main routes they knew to be laced with roadside bombs.

When the medical evacuation helicopters arrived, Wanner boarded the one carrying his patient, and he didn’t leave until Clifton was transported to the U.S. Army hospital at Landstuhl, Germany, three days later.

“He was there every step of the way, ensuring I was receiving the best possible care,” Clifton said of Wanner’s actions. “He assisted the flight surgeon in the medevac, the trauma surgeons in the [operating room], and even helped out a wounded soldier that lay next to me. That’s Mark, … always going over and above the call of duty.”

Wanner, a North Dakota resident, spent nine years in his home state’s National Guard before joining the Ohio National Guard in 2000, when he accepted a job as a researcher with the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine.

In 2003, he left his job at the university to begin two years of Special Forces qualification and specialized language and medical training. When he moved back to North Dakota, he did not even consider leaving his Ohio National Guard Special Forces unit.

“I find it remarkable that he travels every month to train with these men right here,” Wayt said. “That speaks to the brotherhood that exists inside this unit.”

Throughout nearly 20 years of service, Wanner has worked in several specialties, training initially as a vehicle mechanic, then as a carpentry and masonry specialist and combat engineer in the North Dakota National Guard before joining the Ohio National Guard and earning his Green Beret. He earned a bachelor’s degree from North Dakota State University in 1996 with a major in microbiology and minors in chemistry and biotechnology.

Wayt referred to Wanner as a “fixer,” who epitomizes the spirit of the Silver Star Medal.

“If you have mechanical trouble, you call Mark. If you have a house problem and you want something built or fixed, you call Mark,” Wayt said. “And as Sergeant Clifton can attest, he fixes life-threatening injuries as well.”

Wanner, who currently works building custom homes in North Dakota, shrugged off the praise.

“I was just the closest person to him that day. The real heroes are the whole team, our Afghan counterparts,” he said. “The whole team’s a hero, because everyone did their part.”

Nonetheless, Clifton credits the medic who never left his side, ensuring he made it home to his wife and two young sons.

“I’ve thanked Mark several times since that day, and his response is always the same,” Clifton said. “‘Ah, you would have done the same thing. I was just doing my job.’”

DoD
By Army 2nd Lt. Kimberly Snow
Special to American Forces Press Service

Karen Kelly, daughter of Army Maj. Jack Stewart, a Special Forces Soldier missing in action from the Vietnam War, wears a scarf worn by members of the Stewart family during an awards ceremony in Fayetteville, N.C., April 22. Stewart was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for exceptional gallantry while leading a mobile strike force company of U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers near the Cambodian border on March 24, 1967. Stewart was last seen providing cover fire allowing his unit to evacuate in the face of an overwhelming North Vietnamese force.

The history of the U.S. Army Special Forces Regiment is short in relation to that of the rest of the Army, but it’s long enough for fierce battles to become old war stories and for training missions to be lost to the vagueness of time and personal recollection.

But for the men who have worn the Green Beret, the memories of their Special Forces brothers, especially those missing in action and killed in combat, will never fade.

And so, though it took 42 years to happen, Special Forces senior leaders were asked to stand during the second annual Special Forces Symposium, April 22, as the Army officially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to the family of Army Maj. Jack T. Stewart, 5th Special Forces Group, who went missing during a ferocious engagement in Vietnam.

On March 24, 1967, two American Green Berets joined with South Vietnamese soldiers to conduct a helicopter assault near the Cambodian border. The combined unit, a mobile strike force company, included then-Capt. Jack Stewart and Staff Sgt. Roger Hallberg. After landing near Bu Dop in Phuoc Long province, their patrol was greeted by enemy automatic weapons fire, requiring Hallberg to return to the rear area to report on the contact with the North Vietnamese army force.

During the firefight, Stewart rallied his men to secure a helicopter landing zone against an advancing enemy force later estimated to be two heavily armed battalions, greatly outnumbering Stewart’s men. Stewart was last seen by American forces as he and Hallberg provided cover to retreating members of their company.

Diane Hasner, Stewart’s former wife; son Troy Stewart and daughter Karen Kelly; Barbara Stewart Pratt, his sister; and Kermit Stewart, his cousin, represented the Stewart family at the ceremony and accepted the Distinguished Service Cross on behalf of the missing Green Beret.

Speaking on behalf of the family during the ceremony, Kermit Stewart recounted the Stewart family’s uniformed service to the nation during the Revolutionary War, through the Civil War, both world wars, Korea and Vietnam.

In a brief humorous moment, Kermit paralleled the 55 years required for Ezekiel Stewart to receive a pension for his service with the New Jersey State Volunteers during the American Revolution to the 42 years between the disappearance of Maj. Jack Stewart and the awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross.

“I don’t know why it takes the Stewarts so long to be recognized for their service,” Kermit said, “but we finally get there.”

Wearing a red, white and blue scarf embroidered with Major Stewart’s name, unit and date of his disappearance, Hasner spoke of the importance of the award and ceremony to give closure the missing Green Beret.

“This has been a long time coming,” Hasner said. “It’s time for closure for family, friends and the men involved in the situation that day.”

One of the men involved in the action that day was John M. Throckmorton, the lone survivor of the firefight. In the days following the fateful mission, then-2nd Lt. Throckmorton submitted Stewart and Hallberg for valor awards. After meeting the Hallberg family four years ago and learning that neither man had been awarded for their heroism in 1967, Throckmorton resubmitted paperwork that led to Hallberg being awarded the Silver Star and the eventual awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross to Stewart.

The Distinguished Service Cross is the second-highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of the Army, and it is awarded for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force.

DVIDS
Story by Benjamin Abel