Soldier of the Week – Army Pfc. David Hutchinson

By David Hogberg
Investor’s Business Daily
October 23, 2009

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

Army Pfc. David Hutchinson landed in Afghanistan on May 16, 2008.

It would be a short deployment.

On his fifth day a grenade wounded him — but not before he killed five terrorists and helped secure the safety of 16 fellow soldiers.

A year later he received the Silver Star for bravery. The Pentagon says he’s just the fifth Army reservist so honored.

Hutchinson was born in 1987 in Humble, Texas. He joined the Army Reserve when he was 18, joining his family’s long line in uniform.

“There was a strong sense of patriotism in the family,” Hutchinson told IBD. “That was instilled in me from the get-go.”

His grandfather, uncle and a few cousins all joined the military, mostly in the Air Force.

Hutchinson had a simple reason for not going that route: “I’m not a big fan of flying.”

Hutchinson is with the 420th Engineer Brigade. Not that he does much engineering. He mostly trains for brigade security. This involves providing safe transport for VIPs.

On the morning of May 21, 2008, members of the brigade’s security detail were in a convoy of four Humvees driving through the mountains of Afghanistan.

Riding Shotgun

Hutchinson was in the third Humvee manning the MK-19, a machine gun that fires 40 mm grenades. “We wanted to know what it was like on that route before we had to drive it with somebody important,” he said.

The ambush came at 11 a.m. as the convoy moved up a small mountain.

“Just about the time that all four trucks got into the pass, the front truck opened up with its 50-caliber machine gun,” Hutchinson said. “At that point I couldn’t see anything, I could just hear the shooting at the front. I immediately started looking around, and two or three seconds later I saw several insurgents pop up on the right side of the convoy, which was my sector of fire.”

Roughly 20 of the enemy attacked the convoy with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-fired grenades. From 200 feet away terrorist snipers tried to riddle the convoy.

Hutchinson was in the Humvee’s turret and opened up with his MK-19. Despite the crash of battle, he aimed methodically. “There were several positions I could see fire coming from, so it was a matter of assessing which position had the most fire coming from it,” he said.

A machine gun nest at the top of a hill, from which the terrorists were firing a Russian-made PKM, gave the enemy fire superiority. Other terrorists were popping up from the nest, firing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

“To me, it was very obvious that one position had the most amount of fire coming from it, so I focused my firepower on that spot,” said Hutchinson. “Once that was destroyed, I started assessing other spots that had fire coming from them, and I adjusted and fired at those positions.”

By all accounts his MK-19 shots were the main reason the Americans held the terrorists’ ambush at bay, letting the convoy move out of the line of fire. He was so effective, the enemy turned its focus on him.

The terrorist barrage hit him hard, with Hutchinson’s fellow soldiers later counting 100 bullet marks in the turret.

Hutchinson answered with his own onslaught for a few minutes. He emptied an entire can of ammunition before two grenades struck his Humvee. The force of the blast knocked him out of the turret and into the crew compartment. Shrapnel had gashed his right leg.

“When I landed down in the truck, I couldn’t feel my legs,” he recalled. “Actually, I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. At that point, I couldn’t get back in the turret.”

Hutchinson had landed in the lap of 1st Sgt. David Gusberry, who was in the rear passenger seat. As the private rolled over, he saw that Gusberry was seriously injured.

“His entire face was covered in blood, his armor was covered in blood,” Hutchinson said. “Since I couldn’t get back up into the turret, obviously the next best thing I could do was treat his wounds and try to control the bleeding as best I could.”

Gusberry, who was scanning for the enemy and improvised explosive devices that day, recalls Hutchinson’s cool.

“He never panicked. He did his job, then worked on my injuries,” said Gusberry. “He stayed by me to make sure I didn’t go into shock.”

As the attack subsided, the convoy moved out of the mountain pass and met up with a medical helicopter. Hutchinson refused treatment, insisting that the medics tend only to Gusberry. As injured soldiers must be secured on a stretcher before getting on a helicopter, Hutchinson’s decision shortened the time the chopper spent on the ground.

Hutchinson credits his training, which he received at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, from a couple of sergeants first class, Jimmy Snell and Robert Parsons.

“They told us at the beginning that the training would be long and hard, 14 to 16 hour days,” Hutchinson said. “But if we stuck it out, we’d be part of the security detail.”

The training involved practicing ambush scenarios in which Hutchinson and his fellow soldiers were outnumbered six-to-one.

“That taught us to not freak out, that there was always a way to get out of those situations,” he said. “That hard and very realistic training they put us through contributed to everyone coming out of the situation (in Afghanistan) alive.”

Gusberry says training really took with Hutchinson. Why? “His can-do attitude,” said the first sergeant.

Since returning from Afghanistan, Hutchinson, 22, has been promoted to specialist along with landing more medals: a Purple Heart, an Army Achievement Medal and an Army Good Conduct Medal.

He also is recovering from his wounds. For that he thanks the medics on the ground, plus the doctors, nurses and physical therapists at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. “They are all top-notch,” Hutchinson said. “It’s very obvious they know what they are doing.”

Step By Step

“I can walk for longer distances without a cane,” he said. “I’m also getting back the ability to jog, and May was the first month I had gotten back on a bicycle in over a year.”

Gusberry is also making his way back, although he suffers from partial blindness and will be medically discharged from the Army in a few months. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

As Hutchinson heals between Reserve jobs, he works as a retail sales consultant for AT&T . He could be called back to Afghanistan as soon as he’s made a full recovery. He sounds ready to help: “One of the things I noticed while I was there were the people building their own freeways. A lot of the roads are just dirt and hard rock. It was actually inspiring to see these asphalt roads being built, making travel between various cities that much faster.”

Source: Investors