Green Beret gets award for noncombat heroism

Green Beret gets award for noncombat heroism
By KEVIN MAURER
Associated Press Writer
Posted: 07/15/2009

FORT BRAGG, N.C.—In the final minutes of Sgt. James Treber's life, frigid water filling his armored truck, the 24-year-old freed a pinned comrade and shoved the man into the small air pocket he'd been using to breathe.

Treber didn't make it out of the canal in Afghanistan alive, but he saved another Special Forces soldier.

The Army presented his family with a Soldier's Medal—an award for heroism performed while not in combat.

"It is the beginning of the healing process," his father, Gordon Treber of Astoria, Ore., said Wednesday. He said earlier this week that he was proud of his son.

About 130 Soldier's Medals have been awarded since late 2001, according to military records.

Treber's father, stepmother, Nicole, and widow, Tamila attended the ceremony Wednesday at Fort Bragg in the memorial rock garden outside the 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group's headquarters where 17 stones memorialize the members of the battalion killed in Afghanistan.

For Sgt. 1st Class Joseph A. Serna, the June 2008 day is a painful memory.
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Green Beret gets award for noncombat heroism