Augusta soldier wins medal for battlefield valor

Thursday, January 13, 2005

By BETTY ADAMS
Staff Writer

By BETTY ADAMS

Staff Writer

Sgt. Will Stover was on security duty when the attack happened.

Part of the Army's Bravo Battery, 1st Infantry Division, 6th Field Artillery Unit, the 24-year-old soldier from Augusta and his five-man crew placed themselves around concrete blocks that already had been destroyed in an earlier artillery barrage.

Their mission was to protect a road south of Baqubah, a city northeast of Baghdad.

"We were sitting there an hour when a vehicle started coming up faster than normal," Stover said in an interview from Iraq. "We pulled weapons to stop the vehicle, and it started turning away.

"Then it turned back toward us."

As the car raced toward him, Stover began shooting at it and ran to the far side of the unit's armored vehicle.

"I unloaded my mag and loaded another," he said.

Then the car blew up.

"When the explosion happened, I was knocked to the ground and got a piece of shrapnel in my ankle," he said.

For his quick reactions in the face of that day's car bombing, Stover and the unit's gunner both received the Army Commendation Medal with Valor, on New Year's Eve.

"We got a medal for predetonating a car bomb before it could do any harm," Stover said.

The sentiment with the medal says, "Stover's attention to detail and quick reaction without regard to his personal safety saved the lives of his fellow soldiers while single-handedly destroying a vehicle-borne explosive device (car bomb) that was targeting his platoon's position."

The medal for the July 27, 2004, attack was signed by Col. J. H. Pittard.

Stover, who has been in Baqubah for about a year, already has earned one Purple Heart and two others are pending -- all for shrapnel wounds.

"I'm in an office right now to prevent me from getting hurt any more," Stover said. "It's boring, but it's safe. I'd rather be out there with my guys, but I can't."

Stover said his platoon still uses some of the footballs, basketballs, baseballs and gloves, and Frisbees sent to him in Iraq by his father's co-workers at Bath Iron Works and some Maine businesses.

He said conditions have improved somewhat.

"It's the Army," Stover said. "We live with what we've got."

Anyone who wishes to contact Stover, who graduated from Cony High School in 1999, can reach him by e-mail at:

stoverwill@hotmail.com.

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com