By Corey Adwar on June 18, 2015
Although he singlehandedly charged the enemy and protected sensitive U.S. military information, Pfc. Patrick Miller’s heroics were overshadowed and forgotten by a more sensational story.
The March 23, 2003, ambush of 507th Maintenance Company in Nasiriyah, Iraq, was both a military and public relations disaster. Of 31 soldiers who made a wrong turn into the city during the chaos of the invasion, accompanied by two soldiers belonging to the Army’s 3rd Forward Support Battalion, 11 were killed, seven captured, and nine wounded, according to the U.S. Army’s official report of the ambush. Pfc. Jessica Lynch, initially hailed as a hero by the Bush administration and the news media, testified before Congress that she lost consciousness early in the attack and never actually fired a shot.
The real hero of the ambush fought back as long as he could with a jammed gun and no support. Even after his capture, he prevented the enemy from obtaining sensitive papers that would have jeopardized more American lives, according to an account by Tom Bowman of the Baltimore Sun. When the American convoy made its fateful navigational error, 23-year-old Army welder Pfc. Patrick Miller was driving a five-ton wrecker truck with Sgt. James Riley in the passenger seat.
Read the rest at Task and Purpose.
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