At Fort Lewis on Monday, Staff Sgt. William Rose and Brett Moore were each presented with the Soldiers Medal for heroism for rescuing their comrades from a Stryker that flipped into an irrigation canal near Samarra.

The 4,000 U.S. casualties in Iraq “would likely be 4,005 if not for the heroic actions of our honorees today,” Col. David Funk, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division commander, said at the presentation.

“Because they reacted so quickly, because they didn’t take the time to think better of it, five of our fellow soldiers are alive today,” Funk said.

The accident occurred Dec. 16, 2003, early in the 3rd Brigade’s first tour in Iraq.

Only eight days earlier, on Dec. 8, two other Strykers had fallen into a canal in Duluiyah. It was the brigade’s first combat mission, and three men were killed.

It was the worst start imaginable for the new brigade, and it seemed to add to concerns back home that the eight-wheeled armored vehicles weren’t the right choice for the Army’s new medium-weight brigades.

In the second accident, a convoy from the brigade’s 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment was on its way back to camp from Samarra, according to the award citations.

Due to several days of heavy rain, the edges of a dirt roadway had given way as it crossed a canal. The convoy commander ordered the Strykers to find another route.

Rose and Moore watched as a Stryker ahead of them tried another crossing, only to slip off the elevated berm and tumble upside down into nine feet of water. A lieutenant was thrown from the truck; five other soldiers were stuck inside.

Immediately, Rose radioed “rollover!” He and Moore ran to the water and jumped in, still wearing their heavy gear.

“We just ran right in. It was instinct,” Rose said Monday. “… I just did my job.”

He got the rear door open and helped two men out, while Moore swam into the passenger compartment and helped two others and the driver.

Moore said the water filled all but a few inches of the interior.

The Soldiers Medal is among the military’s highest honors for heroism not involving contact with the enemy. For soldiers who become eligible for retirement, it can add 10 percent in retired pay.

Brigade officials said the men were put in for the awards soon after the accident, but the paperwork was lost at the 4th Infantry Division – the brigade’s higher headquarters for those first several weeks in Iraq.

The paperwork continued to get shuffled between various changes of command, but eventually the awards found their way through the Army bureaucracy, officials said.

The two soldiers said they figured the mix-up would get sorted out sooner or later.

Moore, 26, left the Army in 2006 as a sergeant and now works as a construction crane operator in Seattle and Bellevue. He lives in Everett with his fiancee, Lindie Jensen, her daughter, Payton, and their newborn daughter, Rylee.

They and others from his family were on hand for Monday’s ceremony.

Rose, 27, returned to Fort Lewis in October from the brigade’s second Iraq tour. He recently graduated from the Army recruiter’s course.

He and his wife, Victoria, and their daughters, Tatum, 7, and Alyssa, 2, are moving to his native Boston, where he’ll be assigned as a recruiter for the next couple of years.

“It will be nice to get back home and work there for a while,” Rose said, “and get a little break.”

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

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Find our in-depth 2005 report about Stryker rollovers in Iraq, “Capsized in the Canal,” by going to our military blog, FOB Tacoma.

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