Distinguished Service Cross to be awarded at Fort Lewis
CHRISTIAN HILL; The Olympian
A soldier who went to school in Lacey and was formerly assigned to a Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis will be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor in recognizing combat valor.
This week’s ceremony will mark the first time since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that a soldier from the local Army post has been awarded this honor.
Spc. Christopher Waiters, a graduate of Timberline High School in Lacey, had just finished a long shift in Iraq on April 5, 2007. He had just gone down for sleep inside his armored Stryker vehicle when he heard an explosion. An urgent message followed: A car packed with explosives had struck and destroyed an armored Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The wreckage was on fire. U.S. soldiers were trapped inside.
Waiters sprinted alone toward the wreckage as bullets ricocheted around him. Waiters, the senior combat medic in his company, was scared but also knew there was no turning back when lives were at stake.
“I’m already in hell,” he said, recalling that moment during an interview Monday. “I might as well deal with it.”
The extraordinary heroism Waiters, now 26, displayed by treating and evacuating two injured soldiers and attempting to rescue a third is what earned him the award.
“This guy is a true hero for what he did,” Capt. Timothy Price, the company’s former executive officer who was on scene that day, said in a telephone interview.
Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, will present the award Thursday at Fort Lewis in a ceremony attended by the soldier’s parents, Bernard and Sigrun Waiters of Lacey, and other family members.
Waiters is the 17th soldier to be awarded the decoration since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan began seven years ago, according to Army statistics.
Waiters has since been promoted to staff sergeant and transferred to Fort Wainwright, Alaska, to work in its hospital’s emergency room.
He grew up in Germany and moved to Lacey in eighth grade when his father, a retired sergeant first class, transferred to Fort Lewis. Waiters enlisted in the Army before he graduated from high school in 2000.
He spent three years in Germany before transferring to Fort Lewis in May 2004. He deployed twice times with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
In March 2007, as Waiters was returning from leave, his unit, the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, moved to the Diyala Province to reinforce the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. That brigade, based at Fort Hood, Texas, was clearing out the insurgency that had a grip on the region.
Price characterized the region as a “hornet’s nest.”
On that April morning, the insurgents responded to the U.S. military’s presence with a bomb blast.
Arriving at the scene, Waiters found “the whole street is on fire.” He shot two enemy fighters as they were fleeing south, according to the award citation.
Waiters then told Sgt. Joseph Miller, another medic, that he had to get to the wreckage.
Miller tried to warn his comrade.
“I gotta go,” Waiters insisted.
“Don’t go because you might not come back,” Waiters recalled Miller saying.
They were the last words Waiters heard as he got out of the vehicle and sprinted 90 yards.
Waiters jumped on the burning wreckage and pulled out the vehicle commander and driver. He treated them and safeguarded them back to his armored vehicle for further treatment by Miller, according to the citation.
Both soldiers were suffering severe respiratory complications because of smoke inhalation, but they were able to tell Waiters there was a third soldier.
As other soldiers worked to extinguish the fire, Waiters attempted to enter the vehicle from the top, but flames prevented entry. He then climbed into the troop compartment from the back. The heat, which charred his uniform and melted his boots, drove him back.
He then had to retreat a second time when the 25 mm ammunition began “cooking off” inside the compartment. On the third try, he located the dead soldier, later identified as Sgt. Jason Shaffer, 28, of Derry, Pa.
Waiters ran back to his Stryker vehicle to secure a body bag.
“All I was thinking was his parents have the right to have a body at a funeral,” Waiters said. “They deserved to see their son one last time.”
Shaffer only had about two hours remaining on his final mission in Iraq when he was killed in the explosion, said his father, Roger Shaffer, who had high praise for Waiters.
“He risked his own life to save another,” Roger Shaffer said in a telephone interview from his home in Huntly, Va.
Waiters’ company commander nominated him for a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for combat valor.
But Col. Stephen Townsend, the brigade commander, upgraded the nomination. The Army secretary and chief of staff approved the award Aug. 22.
Bernard Waiters said he thanks God that his son did what he did.
“There could be three dead instead of one,” he said. “One dead is too many as it is.”
Waiters learned he was in line for the award and realized its importance when a fellow soldier described it as a “baby Medal of Honor.”
Waiters had to look up an image of the award on the Internet because he’d never seen one.
While saying it’s an honor to receive the award, the soldier downplayed talk of his heroism.
“I was doing what I was trained to do,” he said.
