He didn't have to go back out into the kill zone. He had barely made it through the ambush, and people would have understood. But Jeremy Church's friends were still out there, bleeding and dying, in a maelstrom of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and machine-gun fire.

So he went back.

"I don't think I did anything extraordinary or special," Church says of the actions that led to his Silver Star, the first awarded to a reservist in Operation Iraqi Freedom. "I know my buddies would have done the same thing if they were capable of doing it, if they weren't injured. Those men were my family, and when family members are in trouble, you help them."

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