Tacoma native awarded Silver Star in Afghanistan

Tacoma native awarded Silver Star in Afghanistan

MIKE ARCHBOLD; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: 12/25/10


It was a typical morning in Afghanistan and Spc. Nicholas Robinson was just about finished with a six-hour guard duty shift at an Afghan police compound near his combat outpost.

Then all hell broke loose.

A mortar round landed roughly 20 meters in front of his guard tower.

“It knocked me back and when I got up I saw an explosion like nothing I had ever seen before going off,” the Tacoma native told a public affairs writer with the 101st Airborne Division’s Task Force Leader Rakkasan. “Then gunfire erupted from every possible side you could imagine.”

Over the next seven minutes in the first combat action he had seen, Robinson killed one insurgent carrying a rocket launcher and then held off 15 to 20 insurgents, killing two of them. One of them was a suicide bomber who got to within 50 feet of Robinson.

For his heroism and bravery, Army Chief of Staff George Casey presented Robinson Thursday with a Silver Star, the Army’s third highest award for valor in combat.



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