The GIs were dirty, mosquito-bitten, fatigued, homesick. They had been on the road almost constantly for two weeks. Many had not slept in days.

Smith and his men were part of the 3rd Infantry Division, 23,000 strong. At dawn on April 4, they arrived at Saddam International Airport to the sound of sporadic gunfire and the acrid smell of distant explosions. Breakfast was a mushy, prepackaged concoction the Army optimistically calls "pasta with vegetables."

Still, the mood was upbeat.

Reaching the airport meant the war was almost over. Some of the men broke out cheap cigars to celebrate. Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith and his combat engineers were part of a force of about 100 men assigned to protect the eastern flank by erecting a roadblock on the divided highway that connects the airport and Baghdad. The Army believed a Special Republican Guard battalion was in the area. The roadblock would keep the Iraqis from moving on the airport, about a mile away.

The Americans' arrival had been uneventful. But about 9 a.m., the infantry at the roadblock came under fire. The Iraqis seemed to be somewhere to the south. About 20 infantrymen set off to find them. The engineers soon heard explosions and the rat-tat-tat of automatic rifles.

About 9:30, the infantry radioed, asking for a place to put a handful of prisoners.

"Hey, I've got a great place," Smith said. He had seen a walled courtyard on the north side of the road about a quarter-mile from the roadblock. He would string concertina wire across a corner of the courtyard to form a holding area. A short tower just outside the wall could serve as a guard post.

Smith called for a bulldozer, which knocked a hole through the courtyard's southern wall, nearest the highway. He then gathered two squads, 16 men in all, and they began preparing the POW site.

Smith sent two men to guard a louvered aluminum gate on the far side of the courtyard, about 50 yards from the hole punched by the bulldozer.

One of them was 19-year-old Pvt. Thomas Ketchum. Peering through the gate, he could see something that looked like a bus stop, a stand of trees, and off to the right, a white building. A half hour passed. It was getting hot, fast approaching 100 degrees. Ketchum was tired and bored. Then movement caught his eye. "Hey, I think I see something."

Sgt. Joshua Henry, who had come up with a canteen, asked for Ketchum's rifle, which was fitted with a scope. In the distance, out by the "bus stop," Henry saw 15 to 20 Iraqi soldiers walking from the building. They wore dark green uniforms and carried AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

"Holy s--, look at all the Hajis," said Henry, 23. ("Hajis" is a GI slur for Iraqi soldiers, taken from the word for the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, "hajj.")

They yelled for Smith. He ran up from the middle of the courtyard and squinted through his own scope, purchased at Guns "R" Us back in Hinesville, Ga., near Fort Stewart.

"We're in a world of hurt," Smith said. He ordered two men with machine guns to get into position behind the gate. Then he sent Ketchum to get a Bradley, an armored vehicle loaded with missiles, a rapid-fire cannon and a machine gun.

"Tell the Bradley there's 50 enemy with RPGs," Smith called to Ketchum, who was sprinting back across the courtyard. Smith's eyes got wide. "No, it looks more like a hundred."

I'm going first

"I hope they don't see us. I hope they don't see us," thought 21-year-old Spc. Tony Garcia, standing next to Smith at the gate. Once the Bradley got there, he hoped, the sight of the tanklike vehicle would cause the Iraqis to turn and run.

Other soldiers were spoiling for a fight. They had spent weeks on the road, without showers or decent food, battled sandstorms and exhaustion, and had seen little action beyond blowing up Iraqi ammo dumps.

"I wanted to start whupping some ass right then and there," Sgt. Henry said, "but Sgt. Smith told us to wait."

As they waited for the Bradley, Smith executed what the Army calls "recon by fire." He tossed a grenade over the east wall to see if anyone fired back. Nothing.

It took 15 minutes for the Bradley to get the quarter-mile from the roadblock to the courtyard. Entering through the hole in the wall, it moved slowly, its turret scanning, its tracks scraping the concrete leading to the gate. A few engineers and two infantry scouts, who arrived after catching word of the growing Iraqi threat, stood off to the side. They could barely hear over the diesel engine. The Bradley plowed through the aluminum gate and stopped just outside. Its turret swiveled to the left, aiming toward the Iraqis as they scrambled for cover about 100 yards west and north of the gate. The cannon roared.

The Iraqis replied with RPGs, mortars and rifle fire. Smith and four other soldiers ran behind the Bradley. Smith peeked at the enemy.
"I'm going first," Smith said.

He looked through the scope on his rifle and fired. Sgt. Matthew Keller saw two soldiers fall. Some of the Iraqis dropped into ditches. Smith grabbed an AT-4, a bazooka-type weapon that fires a rocket.
"Cover me," he said.

Smith walked to the front of the Bradley, within clear view of the Iraqis. He fired. The AT-4's backblast knocked Keller to the ground and blew dust off the Bradley. Keller, 24, looked up to see Smith shaking his head.

"Whoa," Smith said. "Remind me not to do that again."

While Smith fired at the Iraqis, other enemy soldiers climbed into the tower overlooking the courtyard, the same one Smith thought would be useful for watching POWs.

The Iraqis in the tower had a commanding view of the GIs below and seemed to use their position to coordinate their fire. Just outside the hole in the courtyard wall, about six soldiers fired back at the tower, trying to keep the Iraqis' heads down. Pvt. Ketchum was among them. Years of hunting deer with his dad back in Ohio had honed his aim, and he had been an ace at the shooting range at Fort Stewart. But the range didn't shoot back. Ketchum was scared. His chest heaved; he found it hard to control his breathing. He saw two M113 personnel carriers (big armored boxes on tracks) parked just outside the wall. He wanted to take cover behind one of them. But he stuck with the other guys.

He saw at least 10 Iraqis trying to scale a 10-foot-high wall near the tower. He fired at one. The bullet hit the Iraqi in the collarbone and knocked him off the wall. It was the first man he had shot, and it felt great. "The bastards were trying to kill me," he said. An Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade streaked over the wall. It sounded like someone ripping a stack of paper - pheewwt. The RPG hit Sgt. Smith's rucksack hanging on the side of one of the M113s. For a moment, the grenade just sat there, red flames jetting out the back. Then it exploded.

Knee pads, elbow pads, T-shirts, underwear spun through the air. A body went flying.

Something hit Ketchum in the eye. "I'm hit! I'm hit!", Ketchum yelled.

Sgt. Henry looked him over. "It's just dirt," Henry said.

Cotton stuffing floated down like snow, and Ketchum realized it wasn't a body the grenade sent flying. It was a sleeping bag. Up at the gate, Smith turned to Keller and told him to get more men. The short, intense sergeant from Key Largo took off across the courtyard, his rifle fixed on the tower. He came across the line of soldiers firing at the tower and called for four of them. Pfc. Michael Pace, 23, grabbed a machine gun and made a Dirty Dozen-like dash toward the gate. Iraqi bullets from the tower plunked off the wall behind him.
"Please, God," Pace prayed, "let me make it across this courtyard."

We thought we were in control until, inexplicably,
the Bradley backed up and left.

Sgt. Kevin Yetter, ordered by Smith to bring up another machine gun, ran across the courtyard, through the hole in the wall and jumped into one of two M113s parked outside. Twenty-three-year-old Sgt. Louis Berwald was on top, manning a big .50-caliber machine gun. The 113, with a supply trailer still attached, rumbled its way into the courtyard. Soldiers at the gate waved toward the tower, and Berwald blasted it. Then the 113 moved in behind the Bradley up at the gate. Berwald started firing at the Iraqi positions outside the courtyard.

Thud. An Iraqi mortar landed 50 yards away from the 113. Thud. Another hit 20 yards away. Then something struck about a half foot from Berwald. The white flash blinded him. Shrapnel ripped into his face, shoulder and left hand.

Metal shards shattered the scope on Yetter's rifle. Pieces lodged in his forehead, nose and eyes. The 37-year-old jumped out the back and screamed, "We're hit!" Blood streamed from his face.
"Am I gonna make it? Am I gonna make it?"

Pvt. Jimmy Hill, 20, was inside the 113. He ran out of the courtyard. A rock-shaped piece of shrapnel was stuck in his neck, pulsating to the rhythm of his heart. Oddly, he was grinning. Then Hill saw blood. "I got hit," he screamed. "I got hit!"
The same blast knocked down Keller and an infantryman.

"What the f-- was that?" the infantryman screamed. He was bleeding from the bridge of his nose. Keller moved behind the nearby Bradley, loaded his grenade launcher and fired. He was reaching for another round when the big armored vehicle began backing up.

"I thought I was going to get run over," Keller said. The Bradley had good position on them. It just didn't make any sense to back out. The Bradley backed around Yetter's damaged 113 and kept going. It nearly ran over Yetter, who was being helped from the courtyard by two other soldiers.

"Why is he leaving us like this?" Yetter wondered. "He's got all this firepower."

Everybody was like, "What the hell?" said Cpl. Daniel Medrano. We felt like we got left out there alone.

The Bradley's arrival had changed the odds in favor of the Americans. When the Bradley left, the Americans were again outmatched. The outnumbered GIs faced intense Iraqi fire. Whether they would survive the next few minutes hinged largely on Smith. He was 33 years old, a 1989 graduate of Tampa Bay Vocational-Technical High School, a husband and father of two.

Fate would now demand payment on Smith's vow "to give all that I am to ensure that all my boys make it home."

But Smith had spent much of his adult life preparing for precisely this moment. Indeed, in a letter to his parents composed just before the war, he seems to have anticipated it:
"There are two ways to come home, stepping off the plane and being carried off the plane. It doesn't matter how I come home because I am prepared to give all that I am to ensure that all my boys make it home."

Smith was tough on teamwork

To his men, Smith was like a character in the old war movies they had watched as kids, an infuriating, by-the-book taskmaster they called the "Morale Nazi."

When Smith earned his sergeant's stripes, he became a stern teacher determined to prepare his men for war - something he had seen and they hadn't. The men did not appreciate his methods.

They didn't like Smith's reaction the day he discovered a soldier had not packed correctly for a training mission. Smith made the entire platoon unpack and start again.

They thought Smith went too far when, during an inspection, he found a screw missing from a soldier's helmet. Smith called the platoon back for reinspection. It lasted until nearly 10 p.m.

"If you f--d up, everybody f--d up," said Cpl. Daniel Medrano. "Teamwork was everything to him." Smith was obsessed with keeping weapons spotless - "freaking crazy about it," according to Medrano. Smith would push a Q-tip into rifle barrels, looking for dirt.

In Kosovo in 2001, Medrano and others urged Smith to lighten up.

Smith snapped at them: "What are you going to do when the enemy is in front of you and your weapon isn't clean? The reason for all this is I've been to a place where it matters."

"We would joke that we're going to go to war, and then we can say we've been in a place where it matters," Medrano, 27, recalled. The men did more than joke about Smith. Some mocked him, a few despised him. One of them keyed his silver Jeep parked outside the company headquarters at Fort Stewart.

He would come home and say, "They hate me. I know they are talking about me," his wife Birgit said. "But Paul knew sooner or later they would understand why he was tough on them."

On occasion, Smith showed his men a different side.

A week before Thanksgiving in 2001, the 18-month-old daughter of Sgt. Harry DeLauter was hospitalized with anemia. DeLauter was in Elizabeth's hospital room in Savannah when someone knocked on the door.

It was Smith. He had driven 40 miles from Fort Stewart to bring Elizabeth a teddy bear. The bear was bigger than she was. "I was speechless," said DeLauter, 31. "He was a perfectionist, always demanding 110 percent from everybody, his way or no way. To see him show feeling outside of work like that was a surprise."

Smith and the rest of the 3rd Infantry Division's First Brigade left for the Middle East on Jan. 23, 2003. In Kuwait, the soldiers spent two months practicing for war.

Some worked harder than others.

At night, when most other soldiers unwound in their tents watching DVDs on laptop computers, playing cards or gawking at Maxim, Smith had his men out running drills. Even his superior, 1st Sgt. Tim Campbell, took notice. "Your guys," Campbell told Smith, "are not having any fun."

But Smith's methods were extreme only in degree. For centuries, armies have hammered men with the same lesson: Their fate in battle is inextricably linked to that of their comrades.

In combat, when every natural instinct tells them to flee, men so trained will stand and fight, so as not to let down their buddies. The payoff comes at storied places like Little Round Top, Bastogne and the Ia Drang Valley. For the men of B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, the payoff would come in a small courtyard outside Baghdad.

After they got to Kuwait, Smith encouraged each of his men to write home, to say the things that need to be said.

On Feb. 26, Smith wrote his own letter to Birgit:

By the time you get this letter, the war will probably be started if it's going to. So I just wanted to say a few things, first I love you and the kids with all my heart. . . . I miss you all very much. And I want you to know that I promised you I would write at least once so here I go. . .

At the end, he added:

P.S. You're still the one.

It was a reference to a single by Shania Twain that had become their song.

April 4, 10:30 a.m.

The GIs in the courtyard and the Iraqis outside had traded gunfire for half an hour. The Bradley fired away, and the battle raged on. Spc. Billy McConnell couldn't believe it when he saw the Bradley back out of the courtyard.

"The dumb sonofabitch," the 27-year-old thought. "Why is he pulling out?"

Without the Bradley, the Americans were in deep trouble. Enemy soldiers held the tower and still fired from it directly into the courtyard. And other Iraqis still fought from ditches about 100 yards to the west and north of the courtyard, launching rocket-propelled grenades and mortars over the walls.

The most powerful American weapon left was the .50-caliber machine gun atop an M113 armored personnel carrier. But the crew - Yetter, Berwald and Hill - had all been wounded. The gun was unmanned.

There was almost no American return fire. Some GIs had left the courtyard, others were helping evacuate Yetter and Berwald. First Sgt. Campbell heard radio reports of wounded Americans. He ran into the courtyard and talked briefly with Smith. "We've got to kill that tower," Campbell said. Then he left to do just that. Inside the courtyard, what to do next was up to Smith. He reasonably could have ordered everyone to safety through the hole in the wall and followed them out.

His commanding officer now believes Smith rejected that option thinking that if Iraqis overran the courtyard, they would jeopardize about 100 GIs outside. These included the infantry at the highway roadblock, the men of a mortar platoon, medics at an aid station and officers in a command center a few hundred yards down the road.

So Smith climbed on the 113. He tried to back it up, but the trailer kept jackknifing.

"Get me a driver," he yelled.

Pvt. Michael Seaman, 21, ran to help.

"Jump in," Smith said. Seaman backed the 113 to the middle of the courtyard. Smith climbed into the gunner's hatch. He stood behind the big machine gun, the upper half of his body exposed, the lower half protected by the armored vehicle. He started blasting away.

"Keep me loaded," he shouted to Seaman. Whenever the 100-round ammunition belt that fed the machine gun was about to run out, Seaman reached down for another.

Whenever Smith stopped firing so Seaman could reload, fire from the Iraqis would pick up. From the hole in the wall, Sgt. Keller could see Smith and waved for him to get out of the courtyard. Word had it that Bradleys were on their way.

Smith motioned back: "No."

"I knew why he wouldn't leave," Keller said. "Without Smith's machine gun there was no firepower out there."

Keller took off running in search of the Bradley. He came across one up on the road, about 100 yards away, and confronted the men inside. "What are you doing? You need to be out there," Keller said.

The response from one of the Bradley crewmen - something like, "No, there's friendlies out there" - confused Keller. He ran back to the courtyard, to a scene right out of Hollywood.

Smith was atop the 113 shooting toward the gate, over the wall, at the tower.

"He was firing, firing, firing - reloading - firing, firing, firing," said Sgt. Robert Nowack, 37. "It was like a director saying, "I want you to look intense."'

The sight reminded Pfc. Pace of To Hell and Back, the film about the WWII exploits of Army 2nd Lt. Audie Murphy, who climbed onto a burning tank, manned a .50-caliber machine gun and mowed down dozens of attacking Germans. Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1945.

Seaman loaded the third can of ammo for Smith.

"Good job," Smith said, "now get down."

Seaman dropped into the belly of the 113 and looked through the periscope. All he could see was the wall. Smith's machine gun roared. Seaman stuck his fingers in his ears. Meanwhile, 1st Sgt. Campbell had run outside the courtyard, grabbed three other GIs and set off along the outer wall of the courtyard toward the Iraqi-occupied tower. Halfway there, Campbell realized Smith's machine gun had stopped firing. Campbell told the others to halt. Their job would be harder if Smith could not keep up fire on the Iraqis in the tower. Then the gun awakened - Seaman had finished a reload of Smith's .50 - and Campbell and the others continued.

Again the .50 went quiet.

By now, though, Campbell's team had reached the bottom of the tower. Inside, they saw Iraqis dressed in black, wearing berets. The GIs fired into the tower's narrow window. The Iraqis flopped around, blood spraying.

"It was everywhere," Campbell said.

Back in the 113, Seaman also wondered why Smith had stopped firing. He had plenty of ammo. Then Smith's knees buckled. He slumped inside the vehicle, blood running down the front of his vest. An enemy bullet, probably from the tower, had hit him in the head. Seaman lifted himself out of the driver's hatch. Tears streaked his blackened cheeks.

"I told him we should just leave," Seaman mumbled. "I told him we should leave."

Pvt. Gary Evans, 28, ran up to help. He jumped on the 113, grabbing the machine gun's hot barrel "like a dumb-ass." Heat seared his hand. Smith would have ripped him good for doing something that stupid. Evans was pretty sure Smith was dead. But he spoke to him anyway as he drove the 113 out of the courtyard. "You're going to be all right. You'll be okay."

Just outside the courtyard, the 113 stalled. Some men pulled Smith out the back, put him on a stretcher and carried him 75 yards to the aid station.

It was 11 a.m., about an hour since the Iraqis were first spotted.

Campbell's team had taken out the tower. Smith's machine gun had stifled any Iraqi advance on the courtyard. Enemy fire petered out. The battle for the courtyard was over.

Campbell joined the soldiers tending Smith.

"I need somebody on him quick," Campbell said as he approached the medics. No one responded. Campbell smacked one on the helmet.

"If you don't take care of this guy right now," he said, "he's going to die."

The aid station smelled like rotten meat, from some dying Iraqis brought there earlier. Medics stuck a tube down Smith's throat. Blood flowed from the tube and splattered on the ground. Doctors and medics took turns giving him CPR.

"We got him, we got him," a medic said, feeling a pulse. "We gotta get him out of here." Someone called for a helicopter.

"Don't give up. Come on, you can do this," another medic exhorted Smith.

From his stretcher, Berwald watched their efforts. "What happened to Smith?" he asked. No one replied.

Then a female medic holding Smith's IV bag set it down and walked away. She lit a cigarette.

Final words

It was dark by the time Sgts. Lincoln Hollinsaid and Derek Pelletier collected Smith's gear. They turned on his laptop and found letters he had written to Birgit and to his parents. They had never been mailed.

"Oh, my God, I found Sgt. Smith's death letter," said Hollinsaid, 27, who saw Smith as a role model.

"Who's going to send this?" Pelletier wondered.

Back in Hinesville, it was afternoon. Birgit sat down to write a letter.

"Hi Babe,"
"First I want to say that I love you so very much. I hope you are doing fine. It must be very hard for you over there . . . I always say to myself no news from you is Good news. I hope I am right."

About 11:15 that very night, the doorbell awakened Birgit. She got up, walked to the door and looked through the peephole. Two men in uniform.

"Mrs. Smith, we have bad news."

At 8 the next morning at a spot a few miles from the courtyard, the B Company engineers held a memorial service. In front of them stood a rifle, stuck bayonet-first in a dirt pile. A helmet rested on the stock. 1st Sgt. Campbell called the roll of platoon sergeants.

"Sgt. Bergman."

"Here, first sergeant."

"Sgt. Roush."

"Here, first sergeant."

"Sgt. Brown."

"Here, first sergeant."

"Sgt. Smith."

Silence.

"Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith."

Silence.

"Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith."

Silence.

The company stood at attention. The soldiers fired a 21-rifle salute. No one had taps on CD, so they went with what they had, a bagpipe version of Amazing Grace.

That same day, April 5, Sgt. Keller asked Sgt. Hollinsaid, who had replaced Smith as head of the second platoon, why the Bradley left in the middle of the battle. Hollinsaid said he would look into it. But he died in combat two days later.

No one else raised the issue. No one knew where the Bradley came from. Younger soldiers thought it wasn't their place to ask questions.

Ten Americans were killed in action on April 4, five from the Army and five Marines. Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith was the only American to die in the fighting around the courtyard. His commanding officer believes he and his fellow soldiers killed as many as 50 Iraqis there.

The courtyard itself had little military importance. But the American position there secured the eastern flank for the U.S. forces occupying the airport, and the airport was, in the words of one officer, "the gateway to the future of Iraq." The 3rd Infantry Division secured the airport on April 5.

Baghdad fell four days later.

Uncommon valor

What explains Smith's commitment to his men?

Few clues are to be found in the story of his early years, growing up in Tampa's Palma Ceia neighborhood. He and three siblings were raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to support the family. Smith was a so-so student, not much of an athlete, not particularly popular. His childhood was altogether unremarkable.

He studied woodworking in high school and did trim work for a contractor. After graduating in June 1989, Smith joined the Army. He was motivated not by patriotism but a desire to find a job offering more stability than the paycheck-to-paycheck life of a carpenter. As a new recruit, Smith left an impression of someone more interested in partying than, say, marksmanship.

But by the time he got to Saddam International Airport, Smith was a different man, a master of the soldier's art. On April 4, in the words of his commanding officer, Smith displayed "extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor without regard for his own life in order to save others . . . in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service. . ."

What Smith offered his men, Abraham Lincoln, in an earlier age, called "the last full measure of devotion."

A quarter-million Americans have served in the Iraq war. Paul Ray Smith is the only one thus far nominated for the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for bravery. (as of the date of this article: Jan. 5, 2004)

Epilogue I

The final chapter of Paul Smith's story is told by those who knew him best:

Pvt. Thomas Ketchum: "A lot of people thought (Smith) was a prick, me included. . . . But now I realize what he taught us saved our lives."

Janice Pvirre: Paul's mother, who lives in New Port Richey. "I'm angry. I'm very angry. It's caused me to question my own Christianity, and I know I shouldn't. But I know there is a reason for it and it will be revealed one day."

Sgt. Kevin Yetter: He knows Smith could have ordered Seaman to man the machine gun rather than do it himself. But Smith "wouldn't send a private to do it. I think he did it knowing that he was better at it and could lay down that protective fire." Yetter has returned to duty along with the other two GIs wounded in the courtyard, Sgt. Berwald and Pvt. Hill.

Elizabeth DeLauter: Now 3, the daughter of Sgt. Harry DeLauter got over her anemia. She still sleeps with the teddy bear Smith drove 40 miles to give her. Her mother named it Smithy.

Jessica Smith and David Smith: They miss Sundays, when they wrestled on the floor with their dad. They miss the pushups he doled out as punishment when they ran in the house or slammed a door. "I don't hear you counting," he would bellow. "Do it again." Jessica, 17, speaks of her adopted dad as "the one who was there for me. He was my father from day one." She plans to study child psychology at the University of South Florida this fall.

David, 9, doesn't talk much about losing his dad. He is in counseling at school. Birgit says he plays war a lot more now than he used to. She fears he'll want to be a soldier when he grows up.

Birgit Smith: After the war, she moved from Fort Stewart to Holiday to be closer to Paul's family. In her new home, she sleeps with Paul's shirts, keeps his dirty Buccaneers ball cap hanging on the bedroom wall. She takes it down when she feels sad and presses it to her face. From time to time she watches Top Gun on DVD.

Epilogue II

By: ALEX LEARY      
St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer      
Published February 2, 2005      

Iraq hero joins hallowed group.

President Bush will present America's top award for bravery to the family of the sergeant who died defending his soldiers.

Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who spent his boyhood in Tampa, became a man in the Army and died outside Baghdad defending his outnumbered soldiers from an Iraqi attack, will receive America's highest award for bravery. President Bush will present the Medal of Honor to Smith's wife, Birgit, and their children Jessica, 18, and David, 11, at a ceremony at the White House, possibly in March.
BULLETIN: 29 March 2005:
The presentation ceremony will be 4 April 2005, the second anniversary of Paul's death.

The official announcement will come soon, but the Pentagon called Mrs. Smith with the news Tuesday afternoon.

Smith is the first soldier from the Iraq war to receive the medal, which had not previously been awarded since 1993. In that year, two Army Special Forces sergeants were killed in Somalia in an action described in the bestselling book Black Hawk Down.

The officer who called Birgit Smith on Tuesday nominated her husband for the medal.

Lt. Col. Thomas Smith (no relation) sent in his recommendation in May 2003, beginning a process that involved reviews at 12 levels of the military chain of command before reaching the White House. On Tuesday (Feb. 2, 2005), Lt. Col. Smith expressed satisfaction that the wait was over, and great admiration for his former subordinate.