Chapter 5 - Fire on the River
Miller swallowed hard, blinking through the sudden blur in his eyes, and forced himself to continue.
“…With the patrol boat disabled and burning, the boat captain killed instantly, and two crewmen critically wounded in the water, Petty Officer Stanton refused extraction orders from the overhead support aircraft. Recognizing that the remaining survivors would be executed or captured, Petty Officer Stanton entered the river under heavy automatic weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenade bombardment.”
Miller’s breath caught in his throat. He looked up for a split second, his eyes meeting George’s. The old man hadn’t moved. He was still staring out the window, his expression distant, as though he weren't in a climate-controlled room in San Diego, but half a world away, fifty-five years in the past, listening to the roar of diesel engines and the deafening crack of AK-47 fire tearing through the bamboo canopy.
“Continue,” Captain Hayes said coldly.
Miller looked back down at the yellowed page.
“Petty Officer Stanton secured both wounded men to a floating fuel drum and guided them into the mangrove brush along the western bank,” Miller read, his voice cracking with rising emotion. “Armed only with a suppressed submachine gun and an experimental bolt-action rifle, he took up an exposed defensive position on the mudbank to draw hostile fire away from the casualties.”
Miller’s chest felt tight, the air in the room suddenly feeling thin.
“For seven hours,” Miller read, each syllable dropping like a lead weight, “through the night and into the early morning hours of October 15, Petty Officer Stanton engaged enemy forces at point-blank range. Despite sustaining multiple fragment wounds from mortar fire and suffering severe gunshot trauma to his right shoulder and leg, he repelled four separate assaults on his perimeter.”
The conference room was dead quiet, save for the hum of the air conditioner and Miller’s unsteady voice.
“When relief elements from SEAL Team One arrived at dawn, Petty Officer Stanton was discovered out of ammunition, defending the surviving crewmen with an entrenching tool. An estimated thirty-two enemy combatants were neutralized in his immediate defensive sector. Both wounded American sailors survived as a direct result of his actions.”
Miller reached the bottom of the page. His voice dropped to a choked whisper.
“Because the operation took place six miles inside Cambodian territory during a period of strict diplomatic denial, all records of the engagement were sealed under Top Secret codeword classification. Petty Officer Stanton was quietly evacuated to a naval hospital in Subic Bay under his administrative cover as a mess cook who suffered industrial burns in a galley explosion. No public citation could be issued.”
Miller’s hands dropped to his sides, the paper fluttering against his trousers. He looked at George Stanton’s hands—the wrinkled, liver-spotted skin, the heavy scars around the wrists, the slightly crooked angle of his right shoulder that he had assumed was just the natural decay of old age.
It wasn't age. It was shrapnel. It was enemy fire absorbed so that two nineteen-year-old boys from Ohio and Georgia could go home to their mothers.
“Do you know why Mr. Stanton is here today, Petty Officer Miller?” Captain Hayes asked quietly.
Miller shook his head numbly. “No, sir.”
“Because two months ago, following decades of quiet petitioning by the families of the men he saved, the Department of the Navy completed the review of Operation Iron Shadow. The President of the United States has signed the order upgrading his classified citation.”
Captain Hayes reached into his desk drawer and brought out a polished velvet box. He opened it carefully and turned it toward Miller.
Sitting inside the crushed satin was a medallion suspended from a sky-blue ribbon surrounded by thirteen white stars.
May you like
The Medal of Honor.
***
