Medal of Honor nominee Army Master Sgt. Matthew O. Williams speaks to reporters at the Pentagon, October 29, 2019.
Transcript
[Announcer] Today, we are honored by the presence of Master Sergeant Matthew Williams who will receive the Medal of Honor from President Trump tomorrow. Three of Master Sergeant Williams battle brothers from Operational detachment Alpha three, three, three six have joined us today. They are, from your left to right, retired Master Sergeant Scott Ford. Former Staff Sergeant Ronald J. Shurer who have previously received the Medal of Honor for his heroic action in the battle of Shok Valley. And Lieutenant Colonel Kyle Walton. At this time, our panelist will provide opening statements, beginning with Master Sergeant Williams.
Yeah, Master Sergeant Matt Williams. First off, I just wanna welcome everybody here today, really appreciate your interest in our story and appreciate everybody coming out. Extremely humbled to be sitting here in front of you, surrounded by some of my buddies from the team and brothers that fought with me that day on April 6th, 2008. We really look forward to sharing our story. It’s a story of teamwork, trust and a real brotherhood that we build in the special forces community.
Staff Sergeant Ron Shurer, I was the medic on that day. Kinda like Matt said, we’re excited to help share some of this story and hopefully highlight not only the actions of the entire team that day and all the Silver Stars and all the heroic actions that occurred there but then to highlight Matt in particular and just the way he kinda moved around the battlefield that day.
Hi, I’m Master Sergeant Scott Ford, retired. I was a team sergeant of special forces ODA 3336. I handled a lot of the down and in aspects of the battle that day and was honored to be here to support Matt and the entire detachment. To see our detachment be recognized again for the amount of heroic acts that were conducted on the battlefield that day and just proud to be here, again to support Matt. Matt actually personally helped me down off the mountain at one point during the battle, which we’ll discuss later and again, just proud to be here to support Matt and the ODA.
Morning, thank you for coming. My name is Lieutenant Colonel Kyle Walton. I was the detachment commander for ODA 3336 during the battle of Shok Valley. I’m very proud to be here, sitting next to the gentleman to my right and to help tell the story of the team and the story in particular of Matt Williams and his heroic actions during that day. I’ll kind of open up and give you a little scene setter of the scenario that Matt found himself in on that morning of April 6th. We woke up at two or three in the morning, monitoring intelligence from the target. Weather was very bad, there was snow on the target and the target was at over 10,000 feet elevation. There was a river, a fast moving river through the middle of the target and when we arrived, a couple hours later at daybreak, the situation that we found ourselves in was a situation where the helicopters could not land where we had to jump into, sometimes into the river, sometimes into jagged rocks, about 10-12 feet off the back-end of the helicopter and that was the beginning of the mission. Our assault force was arrayed into a couple different elements, with a command and control element in the middle and Matt was in the rear assault element with the other two gentlemen sitting up at the table with us right now. Within just a few minutes, enemy forces had pinned down our initial assault element and the command and control element, of which I was part of. We had multiple casualties, one interpreter, our team interpreter was killed instantly and everyone else was either hit by enemy fire or actually wounded by enemy fire and in short order, we found ourselves bounding back to approximately 100 foot cliff where we were forced to fight for the next seven hours, for survival and levy close air support, almost directly on top of our own positions. That was the situation that Matt started the morning in that we’ll discuss a little bit more today but from my perspective, he did a great job and he really epitomized the values of our team and of Special Forces in general and if I had to describe his actions in one way it would be, he was always looking for work. So when Matt completed one task, he showed right back up, all of it under fire, all of it under extreme physical stress and enemy activity around us.
[Announcer] We will now take questions. Okay, down please.
I guess as a starting point, can you provide some context of where this fits in the scheme of other operations, other battles you had on that deployment? I’ve heard and seen in books even that there was a lot of lessons learned out of this. How do you see this in the greater scheme of what you did, over the span of that year?
I think the biggest thing about that is our partner force. This was the first time in Afghanistan where Special Forces, we were always partnered throughout the war, up until that point. However, I think the distinct inference on this trip was that we had stood up to the first battalion of commandos or a ranger type battalion of men that were gonna be Afghanistan’s future special operations capability and our team was tasked to go in there, partner with them, train them and then start conducting operations for the first time in the war’s history. And again, it had been done on every trip previously, however the difference is, this is a formal, we’ve equipped, trained and now we’re gonna use this new tool in Afghanistan to start to give them control of their own country. It was a big step for I think the theater and for the country of Afghanistan and our team was tasked to do that. Does that answer your question?
Yes and I guess looking at, especially some of the things that have been reported about the battle, were you into a lot more than you thought you would be that day? How can you explain what you’d thought you’d seen and what you actually did see?
I think in any Special Forces mission, as a Special Forces soldier, you’re expected to be able to move further, faster, fight harder than others and that’s part of the missions process. So every mission that we do, to be clear, we expect enemy contact and we expect to be a difficult fight. During this mission, the terrain was particularly difficult and we encountered an enemy force that put up a lot more resistance than previous forces that we’d encountered but we had done several missions prior to this mission during that same deployment and experienced multiple gun battles with very little issue overcoming them but one thing you have to keep in the back of your mind is the sort of contingencies that can happen with the weather, with the enemy, with the terrain. These are the sort of things that we are trained for, to react to and during this day, there were a lot more of those contingencies than we normally experience on the battlefield and those are some of the things that bring out the true valor and some of the other actions that Matt undertook on that day. They were really clear because of those desperate circumstances that unfolded over the next six, seven hours.
Master Sergeant Williams, Matthew Cox, military.com this is sort of a follow on my colleague’s question. Okay, so things didn’t go the way they were supposed to go with the mission, and I know you guys are trained for that. Was there a point in time when you were working, when you were reacting to this that you though to yourself, okay this is gonna go badly or it’s, this may not turn out or did you stay confident the whole time where like hey, I got this, no problem. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Kinda thinking back on it and trying to re-experience it in my memory is a little bit difficult but at no one point in time did I ever just sit there and say, this is it, it’s over. That type of thing is not something that we do, it’s not something that we’re trained to do and it’s frankly not something that put you, get you in the position that we were in, being Green Berets. That kind of attitude automatically will disqualify you from that line of work. But on the flip side of that, to say that I was just overly confident the whole, entire time and that we were gonna, no problem, no issue, I don’t think is the case but it’s also not something I dwelled on. It was more of a reacting, relying on training, focusing on my buddies, focusing on the guys that are wounded and looking at the task at hand that just needed to be accomplished. There’s no point in dwelling on how bad the situation really is, you’re better served to folks on what needs to happen and move towards that goal.
Thank you so much for being here, Kristina Wong with Breitbart news. Could you sort of pick up where Walton left off and sort of tell the story, tell what happened in your words, Master Sergeant Williams and also what was going through your head other than, I need to do this or that. I watched a video the army put out and you seem so calm and collected and it seemed like you just knew what to do. So what was actually running through your head at that moment, any thoughts in particular?
So as Lieutenant Colonel Walton kind of started with the two guys wounded and they needed assistance so Ron and Scott actually lead the charge. They were going to go up to the mountain to help. Because Ron was a medic, Scott being team sergeant that was their position. I kind of remember, I yelled at Scott at that point, I was like hey, we need some help whatever, I’ll bring my commandos with us, just to help out with security and get more guys up there. So that’s kinda how I got up to that position in the first place. From there, there was really nothing for me to do right away, it was more focused on how do we get the two wounded guys down so I went back down to help assist in setting up some sort of a way to move the two wounded guys that we had down and that’s when Master Sergeant Ford and John Walton were both injured as well and our focus at that point really changed from hey, is it possible to tactically feasible to continue this mission, or do we need to find a way to exfil and change our focus and that’s what we decided, obviously, needed to do. And immediately then it became hey, we’ve got four wounded Americans and we need to do whatever’s possible to get them home safely. And that’s also what occupied, I think, my mindset from that point forward. There wasn’t a lot of dwelling on likelihoods or possibilities, it was more focused on these guys need to get off the mountain, one way or the other and we’re gonna make sure that that happens.
Can you guys discuss the HVT you were going after? Was this someone you had been chasing throughout the deployment and leading up to this mission, was there some piece of intelligence that pinpointed he was gonna be there at that compound and then afterwards, did you guys get any intelligence about the aftermath, how it impacted his group and him in particular?
What we don’t wanna do is go into our sources and methods and the way that intelligence is developed within special operations because as you know, that can affect the operations that we have going on right now. But suffice it to say, we were given intelligence that a high-level target would be on the objective. We continued to receive intelligence before, during and after the battle that the guy that we were looking for was there. There was confusion at first as to whether or not he had been killed during the air strikes or the assault that we did on the objective but yeah, we did have intelligence that there was an extremely high level target that justified the risks of going into a very difficult enemy position, deep behind enemy lines, as it were, during that target.
Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News. Secretary Gates was, at the time, his initiative the golden hour, when he came into office. That was like a year prior to your engagement. Did you benefit from the golden hour, in terms of getting your wounded out? Then I had a follow-up.
I’m not quite sure… I’m familiar with, medically speaking, I didn’t know he had dictated anything like that. The casualties on the ground were there for well over an hour but I will say that the air crews that came in to help us get those guys out, all of this stuff that we’re dealing with, they flew right into it, knowing the hazards they were gonna be facing and they still did their job to come help us, so whether it was a golden hour or just their personal courage and bravery, doling the right thing, we definitely benefited from that.
Close air support, then and now. Two of you are active duty still. Can you describe the CAS you received back then and improvements, fast-forward 11 years, you probably helped craft improvements but then and now, in terms of the art of CAS.
Well first of all, thank goodness for the United States Air Force and their close partnership with us during our missions, that definitely makes our lives a little bit easier on target and we are partnered with a joint terminal air controller or JTAC which is an air force special operations guy. In our case, it was Zach Rhyner who was on target with us that day. From the ground force commander perspective, I can tell you that having fought in many, many battles prior to this one, I never saw the kind of amazing acrobatics, for short of a better term and some of the maneuvers that those pilots did, whether it be the air force with A-10s or A-15s, or the Apaches from the army or even the Black Hawks from the army. Everybody in all of those units in the whole theater was trying to support us and they even launched a B-1 bomber out of Iraq to support our battle as well, so from the ground force commander perspective, I can tell you that we launched more than 70 danger-close air strikes and one of them was almost directly on top of our own position to prevent us from being overrun and I have never seen that kind of performance or accuracy in any battle previous and my sense is that they’re continuing to provide that kind of support, today. Matt can probably speak to more recent battles than I can.
That day, the CAS is definitely for sure a reason that we’re all sitting here today and Zach’s ability to really harness his training and get them on target quickly, speaks volumes to that program in general and the amount of CAS we had that day. Since that time, over the next 11 years it’s obviously just continued to improve, as training gets better, technology gets better and our weapons systems get better, it’s consistently evolving as with everything else that we do in the Special Operations community.
Can you remind everyone what danger close would be, what’s the range?
So a danger close airstrike is one that’s conducted within a range that you’re expected to wound yourself with the munitions, or that there’s a certain percentage where it’s a higher likelihood that you yourself will be either killed or wounded in the strike. In those situations, we generally try to avoid employing the munitions that close to our own position and it takes special authorization from the ground force commander for every single one of those strikes. So, like I mentioned in this particular battle, I think almost every strike was danger-close. To include F-15s shooting guns only, which is not a normal thing, right in front of our position. It’s definitely not an ordinary kind of airstrike and it’s not done every day, it was the first that I had ever employed in my career, up to that point.
[Tony] Thank you.
Two things I wanna add on to that real quick. Just as far as your golden hour comment, just because I had a few extra deployments previously, I kinda understand where you’re going with that and I think the thing to understand is the golden hour was something that was instituted, I think you quoted the timeframe better than I could have. But the reality is, given the circumstances that day, how far away it was, the weather, that was just another contingency or another problem that stacked up on us that day. Don’t forget, for us to bring in a medevac, we have to be able to get that objective secure enough, otherwise we face another situation like “Black Hawk Down”, ’cause we can all remember that, correct? Where now we’re just stacking more problems on top of a bad situation, so that was a call, partially by our higher command, as well as ourselves. At one point, they asked Kyle and I if they wanna bring in another team and we actually told ’em no. Don’t add more people to the problem at this moment. We’ve gotta get it to a certain level before it’s safe enough. Absolutely.
Thank you, Hailey Britzky with Task and Purpose. Master Sergeant, could you talk a little bit about the moment that you found out you were having your Silver Star upgraded to the Medal of Honor? I don’t know if there was a phone call with the President or what thoughts you were feeling and the I have a followup.
Yeah, actually, the day I got the phone call I had just got back from California from a training thing with my other team and I remember it clearly ’cause Hurricane Florence was coming and we were actually making preparations for that in our area and went without power shortly after the phone call but there’s a couple set of phone calls and it was still very kind of convoluted as to what was actually going on, I was still unsure of the exact situation. So I prepared at the time that I was supposed to get the call, I was sitting in my truck in the driveway and as soon as I got the phone rang, I answered it, the lady on the other end of the phone said, “Please hold for the President” and I was like oh, okay, this is where this is going I guess. Still not 100% certain what was actually taking place and my wife Kate was actually in the garage, with the garage, we’d been working out and I text, I was like hey, get in the truck and she continued working out. So she finally listened to me and came, got in the truck at the very end of the phone call and heard the President kinda closing up and she was still a little confused as to what was going on too, so she’s like, what just happened and I told her. She got extremely emotional at that point and that’s when it really sunk in, seeing her. Her emotion was kind of a little bit overwhelming for me too and that kinda made me understand what had just taken place.
And could any of you talk to the role that these Afghan commandos were playing, what you were seeing from them, how they were reacting to the situations and the orders you were giving them at the time?
Sure, they did the best they could in the situation. There’s about 100 of them, spread throughout the battlefield at one point in time and there was some at the very front, fighting hard with those guys and then we had ours in the back and they were eager to start laying down suppressive fire. Specifically, we had an RPG gunner that was more than excited to start shooting his RPG up at the top of the mountain. But no, they stuck with us as best they could and really relied on the trust that we built together through the months of training that lead up to that mission. We’d done several operations with them before, so they kind of understood that we were there ’til the end and we’re not gonna just bail out and leave them and they did their best to reciprocate.
[Corey] Corey Dickstein, Stars and Stripes. Master Sergeant Williams, did you know that your Silver Star was under review and did you have any expectation of this, before you were called by the President, I suppose?
I was aware of the review process that had been started. Calling for the review of Silver Stars and above basically since, I think it started 2016. And the only reason I was even aware of it was ’cause I think we got a work email, all-call, this is the process, or this was happening and then I thought nothing of it after that. Until, even Ron let me know that his had been upgraded—
Yeah, if I can just take a second here to highlight the humbleness of this man who had already seen me go through this process. I was actually notified on September 4th of last year and he was notified September 14th, so just a few days later but to be getting these cryptic phone calls, kinda like I did, kinda building up to this moment and still at no point did he be like, well of course I’m gonna be getting this. It just speaks to his character so much.
Quick followup for the rest of you. Something stuck in my head when we spoke last year and Dillon Behr said something along the lines of, I got a Silver Star and I remember what Ron did on that mountain and it didn’t seem like it made sense that he had the same. Can you guys speak to Matt’s actions, does it feel kinda similarly to you all in that manner?
Can I start this one off, at least. So, I’ll say, when I did find out that I was gonna be receiving the Medal of Honor, it was obviously humbling and it was an incredible honor. But a lot of it was confusing. I’m the medic, I was out there being the medic, doing my job, what else was I gonna do that day? But then when I found out that Matt was gonna be receiving the medal, to me that made more sense, because I had been up on that mountain with him, I had seen everything he was doing. He went up the mountain with Scott and I, he started establishing the defense around this tiny little area that we’d crammed ourselves into, I wouldn’t call it cover, it was just a horrible position that we found ourselves and with the actions of him and some of the other guys, it made a horrible position just a little bit tenable and let us keep that ground, so that way, we could start to get those casualties off. When I heard of this, it did click, yes, that should have happened.
Devon Suits, Army News Service. Sergeant Williams, you head back to your unit, Fort Bragg, you’re gonna be wearing the Medal of Honor, it’s gonna be designated on your uniform. What’s it gonna be like to interact with the active duty community, as an active duty soldier and just get back into the Special Forces community to see your soldiers?
I haven’t really, I don’t know yet what that’s gonna be like. To be honest with you, I hope I can wear the medal with honor and distinction and represent something that’s much bigger than myself, which is what it means to be on a team, with a team of brothers and what it means to be an elite Special Forces soldier. The medal itself is more of a representation of a story of teamwork, never quitting, trusting in one another and doing what’s right and what needs to be done. As far as the day-to-day goes, I’m hoping to return back to the unit, get back to my team and continue training and getting my current team ready for whatever comes next for us.
[Announcer] Okay, we have time for one more question.
I’ll ask a followup, if I could. We hear often from recent recipients that they’ve reached out to their recent cohort for support, for advice, for all that. You’ve obviously got a pretty good battle buddy in this. Can you make sense or I guess speak to it all, the sort of things you’ll be asking, the sort of things you need to be aware of, just how you see this and how you’re, for lack of a better word to put it, not gonna try and step in it?
I’m extremely lucky to have experienced Ron from notification through ceremony to this point and then letting him lead for the front for this past year and really make sure I don’t step in it, to use your term. But it’s been great, having somebody to fall back on and just ask, I think I texted him the other day and said, here’s my two billionth dumb question, I don’t even remember what the question was but just little things like what do I do here? What about this, it’s been extremely beneficial. I think undertaking something like this, like he had to do on his own, walking into it blind is way more daunting than how I feel about what I’m experiencing right now. Having had him help me prepare me for it.
And I’ll continue on that. At no point am I ever gonna tell Matt how to handle the medal, he’ll figure that out on his own. I think everybody whose ever received the medal has to go through an evolution with it, from that first moment you find out to finding your voice, finding the platform you want to use, the medal, to hopefully benefit all the guys who are still out there, doing it. I mean Matt’s still out there, so it’s a little different for him ’cause he is but I’m not in the military anymore, so I try to use it to reflect on those guys who are still out there, doing the job like Matt and Kyle. As Matt will find out as he gets into the Medal of Honor society. There’s currently 70 living recipients, he’ll be our 71st tomorrow. Every one of them will answer any question he has, be more than willing to help and I’ve benefited from that, I’ve reached out to a lot of the Vietnam Green Berets, asking questions. Like, I’m going to this event, what do you think about me wearing the medal, not wearing the medal, I don’t want it to be a distraction. Pretend it’s some military funeral, am I gonna be a distraction, am I gonna be a benefit? And I don’t think anybody day one is ready for that, so I’ve already asked all the questions of these older guys and hopefully, I can speed up the process a little bit for him but I’m still just learning from the guys who came before me.
[Announcer] Okay, thank you to our honored guests for being here today. This ends our media Roundtable. We will now take a 10-minute pause so we can setup for the one-to-one interviews and Mr. Matt Leone will provide location and the schedule for the interviews, thank you.