During a 12-hour engagement in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province on June 1, 2014, insurgents threw everything they had at combat controller Technical Sgt. Thomas Bauhs.
AK-47 small arms fire. Heavy machine guns. Sniper fire. Rocket-propelled grenades. Even two massive 82-millimeter recoilless rifle rounds that impacted mere feet from Bauhs and knocked him off his feet. The second round -- the second of which brought a wall down on him and blew out both his eardrums.
Each time, Bauhs shook it off, got up and continued fighting and calling in airstrikes.
"You have to" keep going, Bauhs said at a Feb. 4 luncheon at Arlington National Cemetery honoring him and 23 other airmen for their courage. "You know your team is relying on you to do your job."
Bauhs and two other airmen -- another combat controller and a pararescueman -- were attached to a roughly 10-person Army special forces team, conducting a large-scale clearance mission with about 75 Afghan National Security Forces.
Bauhs, who was providing joint terminal attack controller support to the team, described the fighting as "ebb and flow." The team infiltrated the area at night and had minimal contact with the enemy. The sporadic fire continued through the morning, though Bauhs said it was still ineffective at that point.
But in the early afternoon, the fire became a lot heavier and more effective, he said. He described the heaviest fighting as occurring in 30-minute chunks throughout a six-hour period.
The troops were spread out over about a kilometer and a half. Bauhs and the ground force commander, Army Capt. Jason Jones, were on a rooftop providing security when insurgents trained barrages of heavy machine gun and sniper fire on them from multiple locations, according to the Air Force's Portraits in Courage publication. Bauhs said they also were taking RPG and recoilless rifle fire.
"Myself and Capt. Jones were returning fire with our M4s," Bauhs said. "I had a [M203] grenade launcher. We were trying to suppress the enemy. They were basically able to get within about 100 meters of us, due to the thick vegetation. At that point, we started trying to get [two F-16 Fighting Falcon ] aircraft on station to help [provide] support."
As Bauhs prepared to coordinate a "danger close" airstrike while taking cover behind a thick wall on the rooftop, the first 82 mm round hit a few feet away from him.
"At first, I thought it was an RPG," Bauhs said. "Knocked me off my feet. Blew me back, kind of jostled me a bit. Kind of struggled to my feet."
Through the dust and smoke, Bauhs continued calling in the two 500 pound bombs on enemy locations.
About 30 seconds after the first blast, a second 82 mm round hit the wall three feet above Bauhs' head.
The two-feet-thick wall collapsed on Bauhs, and filled the air with even thicker smoke. Both his eardrums were blown out. A falling chunk of mud used to construct the wall struck him in the head and left him with traumatic brain injury.
"It was very disorienting," Bauhs said. "I had pretty bad vertigo from my eardrums being blown out. I couldn't tell up, down, left, right. You couldn't see anything, I couldn't hear. I was aware enough to know we were still taking heavy fire. I knew we had to get to Capt. Jones, and both of us had to get off that rooftop to survive." what had happened to Jones at this point?mh//Jones was either dead or just about to die. Bauhs didn't know he was dead at that point. I can strike the 'to survive' words if it makes it clearer.
Bauhs had another combat controller take over the airstrikes and turned his attention to Jones.
"The machine gun fire was pretty effective at that point, and the cover was pretty much gone," Bauhs said. "He wasn't responding, so I crawled over to him, tried to assess how he was. As soon as I was able to get to him, and get hands on him, I realized that he had expired."
Jones had sustained traumatic head wounds, Bauhs said. Bauhs He radioed for help, and two teammates arrived and helped him get their captain's body off of the rooftop. Roughly six Afghans were also wounded. Bauhs coordinated with the other combat controller to bring in MEDEVAC. The Air Force said Bauhs found a landing zone suitable for the helicopter evacuation, and identified the safest arrival and departure route.
The battle continued for another roughly six hours, Bauhs said. Through his injuries, he remained on the battlefield and coordinated nine more air-to-ground engagements, including close air support from an AC-130W Stinger II and strafing runs from AH-64 Apache helicopters on multiple locations.
"Bauhs continued coordinating air support to protect the remainder of the team while leading his teammates to the exfiltration landing zone," the Air Force said. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor for his actions that day.
At the Portraits in Courage luncheon, Bauhs spoke highly of the captain who lost his life that day.
Jones "was one of the greatest people I ever met," Bauhs said. "A true American. A great hero."
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
