First Medal Of Honor For Iraq GI
Son, 11, Accepts Posthumous Medal For Sgt. Paul Ray Smith
-
Play CBS Video Video A Soldier's Sacrifice Rewarded President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Paul Ray Smith's family, who sacrificed his life at the beginning of the Iraq war. The Early Show's Tracy Smith reports.
-
Video Medal Of Honor Awarded For the first time in a dozen years, the Medal of Honor will be awarded to a U.S. soldier: Sgt. Paul Ray Smith, killed in combat in the Iraq War. The Early Show's Tracy Smith reports.
-
Video Forming Iraq's Government Attacks are escalating in Iraq as officials are set to meet and select a new president. The leader of the Kurdish alliance is the favorite for the largely symbolic role, Lee Cowan reports.
-
-
Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith is seen in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Army. (AP)
-
President Bush awards the first Medal of Honor for service in the Iraq war to11-year-old David Smith for his late father. (AP)
-
-
Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
-
Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
Smith is credited with protecting the lives of scores of lightly armed American soldiers who were beyond his position in the battle, on April 4, 2003, near the gates of Baghdad International Airport.
On Monday, exactly two years after Smith's death, President Bush awarded him the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor for valor. Smith's 11-year-old son, David, accepted the medal on his father's behalf.
"We are here to pay tribute to a soldier whose service illustrates the highest ideals of leadership and love of our country," Mr. Bush said in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Mr. Bush said Smith "gave his life for these ideals in a deadly battle outside Baghdad. It is my great privilege to recognize his great sacrifice by awarding Sgt. Smith the Medal of Honor."
It is only the third Medal of Honor given for actions since the Vietnam War, and the first from the Iraq war.
"Paul was very shy person," his widow, Birgit, told CBS Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen on Monday. "He would be embarrassed right now. He never wanted to stand in the spotlight and get anything. It was just Paul. ...He would say we're overdoing it; he just did what he had to do that day."
Smith, 33, was the senior sergeant in a platoon of engineers during the 3rd Infantry Division's northward sprint toward Baghdad.
By the morning of April 4, elements of the division had reached Baghdad and captured Baghdad International Airport, a key objective. Encircled Iraqi militiamen and Special Republican Guard forces inside launched counterattacks.
Near the eastern edge of the airport, Smith, a veteran of the first Gulf War, had been put in charge of his unit — 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 11th Engineer Battalion — while his lieutenant went on a scouting mission.
Smith's mission was mundane enough — turn a courtyard into a holding pen for Iraqi prisoners of war. The courtyard, just north of the main road between Baghdad and the airport, was near an Iraqi military compound.
Soon after Smith and some of his platoon began work, records show, one trooper spotted dozens of armed Iraqis approaching from beyond the gated walls of the courtyard. Another group of Iraqis occupied a nearby tower.
Smith summoned a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and he and his troops gathered near the courtyard gate to fight the counterattack. An M113 armored personnel carrier joined the fray.
The Iraqis, perhaps as many as 100, attacked with rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Smith threw a grenade over a wall to drive back some of the Iraqis, then fired a rocket.
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
