Face of Defense: Soldier Earns Medal for Saving German’s Life

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2011 — Army Staff Sgt. Peter Wok­en was unique­ly hon­ored recent­ly for prov­ing that, in com­bat, it does­n’t mat­ter what lan­guages your allies speak, every sol­dier who fights along­side you is like a broth­er.

 -
Ger­man Ambas­sador Peter Ammon pre­sent­ed U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Peter Wok­en with the Ger­man Medal of Hon­or for Gal­lantry in Action, which is sim­i­lar to the Amer­i­can Sil­ver Star, dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at the ambassador’s home in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Dec. 8, 2011. U.S. Army pho­to by C. Todd Lopez
Click to enlarge
 -
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Peter Wok­en and Ger­man army Cpl. Tim Fock­en embrace fol­low­ing a cer­e­mo­ny, at the home of the Ger­man ambas­sador in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Dec. 8, 2011. Dur­ing the event, Wok­en was award­ed the Ger­man Medal of Hon­or for Gal­lantry in Action for sav­ing Focken’s like in Afghanistan. U.S. Army pho­to by C. Todd Lopez
Click to enlarge

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment high­light­ed that real­i­ty of war Dec. 8 when Ger­man Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States Peter Ammon pre­sent­ed Wok­en with the Ger­man Medal of Hon­or for Gal­lantry in Action — an award sim­i­lar to the Amer­i­can Sil­ver Star. 

Address­ing the non­com­mis­sioned officer’s wife and two sons who attend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny, Ammon told the fam­i­ly an entire nation is thank­ful for Woken’s actions in Afghanistan which saved the life of Ger­man Cpl. Tim Focken.

“The Ger­man gov­ern­ment and the Ger­man peo­ple are deeply grate­ful for your hus­band and your father,” Ammon said.

Ammon pinned the medal on Woken’s uni­form. The sergeant, now part of the War­rior Tran­si­tion Unit at Fort Hood, Texas, is the first Amer­i­can to receive the medal on Amer­i­can soil. Sev­en oth­er U.S. sol­diers involved in sav­ing Focken’s life also received the medal, though it was pre­sent­ed to them in the­ater by Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Thomas de Maizi�re.

Wok­en had said that he views the recog­ni­tion as con­fir­ma­tion of what sol­diers know about their com­rades — that sol­dier­ing togeth­er unites ser­vice­men across lan­guages and nationalities.

“Even though Ger­many is hon­or­ing me this way, I think what they are con­vey­ing is that we are all broth­ers,” Wok­en said. “This type of award gen­er­al­ly does­n’t go to Amer­i­cans. It will go to Ger­mans on Ger­man soil. We feel the same way. They are fight­ing the same ene­my that we are, and we are all brothers.”

To an infantry­man, uni­form, lan­guage and nation­al­i­ty make no dif­fer­ence if you’re fight­ing on the same side, Fock­en said.

“We’ve had a lot of bat­tles, and we’ve fought side-by-side with 10th Moun­tain,” he said. “There was nev­er a dis­cus­sion of who is there to help who and to save who. It’s basi­cal­ly like broth­ers, and if any­body need­ed help, nation­al­i­ty does­n’t mat­ter. You’re there to help.”

Fock­en was shot Oct. 7, 2010 when his Ger­man ground patrol at Qala-ye Zai, Afghanistan, came under ene­my fire. After receiv­ing imme­di­ate med­ical assis­tance from Ger­man army medics, Fock­en board­ed an Amer­i­can Black Hawk heli­copter where flight medic Wok­en tend­ed to the injured soldier’s wounds dur­ing trav­el to a mil­i­tary hospital.

The action in Afghanistan that earned him the award was typ­i­cal of what com­bat medics are called upon to do as many as 10 times a day. Wok­en said he has per­formed so many res­cues that he’s lost count.

“I had stopped count­ing at 357,” he said. “At that point, it was becom­ing kind of redun­dant to even count.”

Wok­en, a Taco­ma, Wash., native, said teams like his are on call for 48 hours at a time with 24 hours of down time between. On that day in Afghanistan, his team was wait­ing in a “relaxed state,” he said, until they got the call to do a res­cue. Then, he said, “We went from basi­cal­ly zero to 100 in a mat­ter of minutes.”

“We were fly­ing about as fast as we could go to the scene,” he said. “We were told there were troops in con­tact. Once we got there, we over­flew the scene one time. Nor­mal­ly we will do a high recon and then a low recon. And we only did one low recon and we land­ed. I guess our pilot chose to not do a full land­ing. We took off due to safe­ty reasons.”

The crew decid­ed quick­ly to land again to pick up the injured Ger­man sol­dier; per­son­al risk is not part of the equa­tion, he said, when you are try­ing to save somebody’s life.

“A flight medic should­n’t feel like they are tak­ing a risk what­so­ev­er,” Wok­en said. “You have to think that God has your back, and you have the back of the sol­dier on the ground.”

The Black Hawk stayed on the ground for less than a minute before Fock­en, who had been lead­ing a team of three sol­diers on the ground, was on board, Wok­en said.

“Our job was to go into the town, Qala-ye Zai, to do recon,” Fock­en said. “We got there ear­ly so our com­pa­ny com­man­der could do [intel­li­gence gath­er­ing] and recon. My three sol­diers and I were on the com­pound roof secur­ing the perime­ter. About a half hour after we got into Qala-ye Zai, heavy fight­ing broke out, with the Tal­iban insur­gents fir­ing. After about one and a half hours of intense fight­ing, a sharp­shoot­er picked me off the roof.”

Fock­en was hit in the left shoulder.

“I was talk­ing to one of my guys when I got shot,” he said. “It felt like a bolt of elec­tric­i­ty going through my arm.”

He was able to main­tain order among his sol­diers even after he was shot, and his sol­diers applied aid to try to stop his bleed­ing. Once on the ground, a Ger­man medic tend­ed to his wound, and then he was able to get to the helicopter.

“His atti­tude was prob­a­bly one of the best I’ve seen out of any injured sol­dier,” Wok­en said. “He was still in top phys­i­cal con­di­tion. He was able to jump into the heli­copter even though it was three and a half feet off the ground. He was able to speak with me and explain how he was feel­ing. And at the end of the mis­sion, he walked off the helicopter.”

Both Wok­en and Fock­en were present at the cer­e­mo­ny — brought togeth­er for the event by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. The two had not been in con­tact with each oth­er since Fock­en depart­ed Woken’s Black Hawk in Afghanistan in 2010.

“Nor­mal­ly I’ll get my patient, I’ll take care of them on the air­craft, then they walk away. I nev­er hear or see from them again,” Wok­en said. “This morn­ing, I got to meet Cor­po­ral Tim Fock­en and start a rela­tion­ship. It pro­vides a lot of clo­sure for me.”

For Fock­en, he got a chance to say “thank you” to one of the Amer­i­can sol­diers that helped save his life. “It’s a great thing to say ‘thank you’ per­son­al­ly to Sergeant Wok­en and to his crew that saved me,” he said.

Ammon said the award cer­e­mo­ny was about more than just a medal. He said it was about an endur­ing friend­ship between two allied nations. “Today is more than just pay­ing trib­ute to the brav­ery of one coura­geous ser­vice­man who saved a fel­low sol­dier,” Ammon said. “Today, we also cel­e­brate the last­ing vital­i­ty of our alliance in chal­leng­ing times — an alliance that has roots going back to the Amer­i­can rev­o­lu­tion of 1776, and an alliance that will remain a cor­ner­stone of our secu­ri­ty well into the 21st century.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →