Iraq war veteran fights for medals

Munson: Iraq war veteran fights for medals
Des Moines Register
Written by
Kyle Munson
November 23, 2013

Sgt. 1st Class Mark Huss burst into the third-floor apartment, rounded a wall and froze with the barrel of his M4 assault rifle pointed an inch from the forehead of an 11-year-old Iraqi girl in tears.

Once the Army reservist and his fellow soldiers calmed the girl and her family, he sank onto the sofa, on the verge of hyperventilation. His combat boots sloshed with the nervous sweat that had pooled throughout that morning’s deadly car bomb attack, followed by a street firefight and a methodical search through apartment buildings to root out the insurgents who had been trying to kill them.

He has a daughter back in Iowa who’s the same age, Huss thought to himself.

What the hell was going on?

That was just one absurd scene for Huss in a violent, often surreal, deployment.

Huss, 45, still was wrangling with that deployment when I met him this month. The 6-foot, 222-pound Iowan topped by a clean-shaven head had hit a dead end in a frustrating quest to secure two belated Army medals.

He has faced a gantlet of bureaucratic hurdles, including a single, crucial box on a form that was accidentally left blank.
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