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SF airman earns Bronze Star for Iraq actions

Airman 1st Class Antonio Antunez was manning his .50-caliber machine gun in the lead vehicle of a four-Humvee convoy when the bomb exploded.

“We were just sweeping the area and that’s when the explosion went off,” Antunez said.

It was 2 a.m. on a mission to sniff out an earlier explosion in a southern Iraqi port, and Antunez found himself in a burning vehicle, alone except for a panicked and injured interpreter in the back seat.

“He was scared; I kicked him out and then the door closed on me,” Antunez said.

The door knocked him out for 30 seconds while flames consumed the Humvee.

Awakened by the heat, Antunez started to escape the vehicle from his turret when he noticed gunfire from a nearby water tower. Four insurgents with AK47s had pinned down the rest of the Humvee’s occupants in a ditch by the side of the road.

Instead of engaging the enemy with his .50-cal, which Antunez said would have endangered civilians, he grabbed his M4 and laid down a magazine’s worth of covering fire before rejoining his squad and returning to the rest of his convoy to continue the mission.

Antunez spent a week in the hospital from his injuries before rejoining his unit and returning to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., in May.

For his actions on Jan. 8, 2008, Antunez was honored Jan. 26 with a Bronze Star with Valor during a ceremony at Nellis, where he is assigned to the 99th Security Forces Squadron. Pinning on the medal was Vice Chief of Staff Gen. William Fraser.

“Airman Antunez epitomizes the Air Force core values,” Fraser said during the ceremony at Thunderbird Hangar. “He is an inspiration to us all.”