America's North Shore Journal

Reprinted from October 17 2007

Bronze Star with V device, Purple Heart

Army Times

RICHMOND, Ky. A former Miss Teen Madison County has been recommended for the nation’s fourth-highest military honor for her actoins during a battle in Iraq earlier this month [April 2004].

Along with a Bronze Star with a ‘V’ for valor recommendation, Army Spec. Theresa Lynn Flannery, 26, is also receiving a Purple Heart for an injury she received while under fire during a battle at Najaf, Iraq.

Flannery broke bones in her right wrist and hand diving for cover during the two-hour firefight, then treated other fellow soldiers before having her own injury diagnosed.

A letter from Col. William Ettinger, deputy commander of her unit, to Flannery’s family outlined Flannery’s work and her injuries.

‘Words cannot express how proud I am of your daughter,’ Ettinger wrote. ‘She is a fine soldier.’

Theresa Flannery’s father, David Flannery of Richmond, said family members did not know the extent of her injuries or actions until receiving Ettinger’s letter.

‘I get choked up reading that letter,’ David Flannery said.

If Theresa Flannery, who won Miss Teen Madison County in 1991, is awarded the Bronze Star, it would be the second to go to the Flannery family for duty in Iraq. Her youngest brother, Warrant Officer Christopher Flannery, 20, was awarded the Bronze Star while serving with the Army Reserve during the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein last year.

Christopher Flannery is now in Army helicopter pilot training in Georgia. Theresa Flannery’s second brother, Kentucky Air National Guard Senior Airman David Flannery II, 22, was activated and served overseas during the campaign in Afghanistan. He is now back home in Berea.

About a year after high school, Theresa joined the U.S. Army and became a combat engineer, serving in Germany and other places. She joined the Army Reserve after her enlistment ended.

‘There have been a lot of sleepless nights, ever since 9/11,’ said David Flannery, who served in the Air Force during the 1970s and was a Lexington police officer from 1978 to 2002. ‘You try to limit your TV watching, waiting and looking for news. You can’t watch the 11 o’clock news and then go to bed. It doesn’t work. There’s too much on your mind.’

According to Ettinger’s letter, Flannery volunteered to accompany a group of coalition military observers in Najaf, where up to a million Shiite Muslims were participating in an annual religious pilgrimage. Authorities feared guerrillas opposed to the U.S.-led occupation might attack the pilgrims.

On the morning of April 2, the letter said, the situation in Najaf began to turn violent, with militiamen opening fire on the compound of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Najaf, where Flannery was on duty.

Though having seen news reports about the fighting in Najaf and Fallujah, David and Maggie Flannery really didn’t know of their daughter’s direct involvement until a few days ago when she called. Theresa Flannery said only that her hand was injured, that she had been in some firefights and that she had helped a wounded soldier. Only in later conversations did details start to come out.

Her mother, Maggie Flannery, said she’s still amazed by her daughter’s story.

‘I just think back to when she was in all those pageants,’ Maggie Flannery said. ‘Here she is, this delicate beauty queen type, and she’s in the middle of all this fighting. It’s just hard to believe.’

Richmond Register

“This is why I fight and why I continue to serve,” said Sgt. Theresa Flannery, as she held her 2-year old son on a stage where she was once crowned Miss Madison County and Miss Teen Madison County.

Flannery, a 1997 graduate of Madison Southern High School who spent most of 2004 with the U.S. Army in Iraq, was recognized Friday evening as the second annual Kentucky Veterans Welcome Home Celebration began at the Madison County Fair Grounds.

Flannery joined the military in 2000, had already fulfilled her two-year active duty assignment and was assigned to the Lexington-based 15th Transportation Reserve Company, when she was activated in December 2003.

The next month she was driving vehicles in Iraq. On April 4, 2004, her unit came under attack by insurgents who hoped to kill or capture a member of U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer’s staff in the volatile city of Najaf.

For nearly 12 hours, she was operating a rifle rather than an automobile, firing off 800 rounds.

She was the only woman in a continent of about 20 Americans that stood with Spanish soldiers to hold off an attack by more than 1,000 insurgents.

“I fractured my hand as I jumped to the ground to take cover,” she said. “I heard two bullets whiz past my head as I fell.” Two of her comrades were wounded as the attack began.

“Their blood is still on these boots,” she said, pointing to her unpolished footwear.

“My hand was swollen, but it was not diagnosed as fractured until two weeks later,” she said. “It hurt as I was firing my rifle, but when you’re fighting for your life, you forget about the pain.”

She was awarded a purple heart and a combat citation for valor.

Flannery said both of her brothers, David and Christopher, followed her into the military.

Their parents are David and Maggie Flannery of Berea.

Flannery, who now lives in Lexington, is set to receive two associate’s degrees from the Bluegrass Community and Technical College in May. She hopes to receive those diplomas before returning for a second tour of duty next year in Iraq.

DoD

WASHINGTON, April 4, 2004 – Spanish and Salvadoran troops in Najaf came under attack from gunmen hiding in a crowd of protesters, coalition officials said in Baghdad today.

One El Salvadoran soldier was killed, and 12 El Salvadoran soldiers and one U.S. soldier were wounded when a large number of men, many dressed in black, attacked a Coalition base with small-arms fire, said a coalition news release. The wounded were transported to the 31st Combat Support Hospital for treatment.

Coalition forces including U.S. Air Force aircraft and U.S. Army gunships responded to the attacks. The situation in Najaf is now stabilized, senior military officials said in a background briefing earlier in the day.

Officials said the attacks began at about 11:45 a.m. Iraq time, when a vehicle leaving an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps base came under small-arms fire. From about noon to 2:30 p.m., the coalition base came under attack from “a large number of personnel.”