Special Tactics airman awarded Air Force Cross for saving Green Beret team in desperate 8-hour firefight
“I knew then that I had to go get to my teammates and help them."
By David Roza December 11, 2020
New details revealed at an award ceremony honoring Staff Sgt. Alaxey Germanovich show just how close the Special Tactics airman and his Army Special Forces teammates came to disaster during a 2017 mission in Afghanistan — and just how important Germanovich’s actions were to change the outcome.
“I said ‘if you don’t come back, we’re dead,’†Germanovich recalled telling the crew of a AC-130U Spooky gunship in the middle of the pitched battle. The airman was awarded the Air Force Cross, a medal second only to the Medal of Honor, by Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico on Thursday.
A combat controller from the 26th Special Tactics Squadron, Germanovich’s job was to coordinate air support as he, his Army buddies and a crew of Afghan commandos forced anti-coalition fighters out of several valleys in Nangarhar Province in northwest Afghanistan. The multi-day mission grew more and more violent until one day, April 8, Germanovich woke up to the sound of machine-gun fire and spotted his American teammates pinned down behind a rock, beset on all sides by effective enemy fire.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/alaxey-germanovich-air-force-cross/
