American Valor Quarterly Issue 5 - Winter 2008/09 | Page 34

shot right out of his hands
as he tried to make the call.

Top: U.S. Navy Photo; Bottom: U.S. Army Photo

They left their position
with their weapons, and
began to move down the
ridge; but they left
everything else behind as
they were quickly pursued
by the large Taliban force.
Lt. Murphy tactically
advised his men on where
to go, and kept control of
the situation as they
Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy,
engaged the enemy. Danny
United States Navy.
Dietz fell mortally
wounded, and the radio was compromised.

doing their jobs. SFC Smith was then a new platoon sergeant at
the time. They had given him the most complicated platoon that
combat engineer companies could get, which is the assault and
obstacle engineer platoon. It is full of equipment but not a lot of
men, so each guy has two or three pieces of equipment that he
has to ride herd on – it’s a tough platoon in which to be the
platoon sergeant. But they had given it to him, which I thought
was interesting, and must have said something about him as a
Soldier.
I quickly learned that SFC Smith was all about living up to the
highest standards of duty and performance. He made sure he
knew exactly how to run all of the equipment in the platoon,
learning as much about it as possible. He trained his guys from
dawn to dusk to ensure they knew what they were doing.

In the summer of 2001, we learned we were going to Kosovo,
where our mission was to fight as infantry. Not only did he train
Lt. Murphy had a satellite phone, and he climbed up on a rock in the men on all the engineer tasks of run