Fourteen members of the Army’s 12th Combat Aviation Brigade Medals of Valor from Germany

Soldiers become first to receive German honor

By Sean O’Sullivan - The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal
Posted : Friday Apr 30, 2010 18:12:23 EDT

Fourteen members of the Army’s 12th Combat Aviation Brigade on Thursday became the first non-Germans to receive Germany’s Gold Cross, one of that nation’s highest honors for valor.

The soldiers, based at U.S. Army Garrison-Ansbach, Germany, were honored for medevac flights they performed April 2 involving German troops who had been ambushed by some 200 Taliban fighters while on patrol north of the city of Kunduz, Afghanistan.

The firefight was still going on when the Black Hawk evacuation helicopters — two medical transport helicopters and one heavily armed “chase” helicopter — arrived, according to what Army Capt. Robert McDonough, who piloted one of the medical helicopters, told his father, Jack McDonough.

“The two Black Hawks did a combined seven landings into the middle of this battle. My son told me that he could see rounds hitting the blades of his helicopter and there were bullet holes in the Blackhawks,” Jack McDonough wrote in an e-mail message. “He said the incoming fire was so bad that at one point he banked the helicopter real hard to avoid the incoming rounds. He told me he saw the Taliban celebrating, thinking they had downed them.”

According to a letter sent to the McDonough family by Army Maj. Michael S. Hughes, the medevac team “performed heroically in the face of extreme adversity,” and their actions saved at least five German soldiers “and probably countless more.”
read more here
Soldiers become first to receive German honor