Project Hero

QandO has the next Silver Star recipient tribute up on their site.



Our hero this week is SFC David Lowe, Silver Star

It was midafternoon last June when Lowe's team, accompanied by Afghan forces, began climbing a steep mountainside to reach the 82nd Airborne paratroopers fighting off pockets of enemy on all sides.

Lowe's team moved through the brush without talking. The sun cast shadows on the hills, making it difficult to see. Lowe was uphill providing cover ahead of Sgt. 1st Class Victor Cervantes, who walked below through a dry streambed, when fire from a Kalashnikov broke out near Cervantes's position.

Lowe turned and dashed back, catching a glimpse of a camouflage coat and a figure ducking between the trees and rocks. Lowe fired at it with his M-4 and the gunfire stopped. Then he began yelling, "Vic!" "Vic!" trying to find his teammate.

"So anyway, Vic was dead," Lowe recalled, choking up at the memory. But Lowe, the team medic, said he controlled an urge to charge blindly up the hill in revenge.

Instead, according to his medal citation, during a six-hour firefight, Lowe moved deliberately to aid the wounded -- at one point dashing over 150 yards of open ground. He climbed an exposed rock pinnacle to shoot down a fighter who had a teammate pinned down, and helped kill six other attackers, including some who shot at the soldiers as they attempted to carry out Cervantes's body.

"We were a week from going home, and he's putting himself in harm's way -- he's the real hero today," Lowe said of Cervantes, 27, of Stockton, Calif.