MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif -- A Weapons and Field Training Battalion Marine was awarded the Bronze Star Medal in a ceremony aboard Edson Range, Dec. 18 for actions while serving as team chief for Iraqi Military Transition Team 0720 in 2008.
Maj. Carlos V. Gomez’s responsibilities were leading a team involved in the training of an Iraqi Army Brigade by assisting them in the transition to a self-sustaining fighting force.
Gomez now serves as the company commander for Field Co., Weapons and Field Training Battalion and oversees the field training of U.S. Marine recruits; a mission and responsibility that differs very little from where he had come from last year.
“I served as the senior advisor to an Iraqi Army general,” Gomez said. “My purpose was to help him and his staff to properly plan, coordinate and execute operations.”
These Iraqi Army soldiers conducted a myriad of humanitarian and direct action missions to try to eliminate a fragmented and irresolute insurgency remaining in Iraq without the help of coalition forces, Gomez said.
No mission comes without difficulties and obstacles, and neither did Gomez’s.
Gomez explained that the Iraqis can be misunderstood. Their nature is often confused as being lazy, when they just work differently then we are accustomed to in America.
“The biggest challenge was the (Iraqi’s) impression that we, as Americans, don’t understand the Iraqi culture,” Gomez said. “But after working and living with them for awhile, we began to develop a mutual understanding.”
With the obstacles also came small victories of a democratic nation beginning to stand on its own.
“We performed seven large scale military operations and we were the first to perform a full combined arms exercise very similar to how we train our Marines,” Gomez said.
All the missions that these Iraqi soldiers and U.S. Marines performed resulted in success and steps forward for the nation, Gomez said.
As troops begin to leave Iraq and move into Afghanistan, it is hard not to reflect on the effort that transported us to the doorstep of victory, said Col. Patrick G. Looney, commanding officer of WFTBn.
Success in Iraq and the continued successes in Afghanistan are the result of many teams like these, Looney said.
“Teams like Maj. Gomez’s are the reason we are going to be able to get our guys out of there and home safely,” Looney said. “The (Iraqis) need to be able to protect their own nation and people.”
Gomez has now come full circle and instills the same mentorship and fervor towards the Marines who he is in charge of currently, he said. But it is the Marines who served along with him in Iraq who enabled him to receive his award.
“I had a rock star staff over there,” Gomez said. “Every Marine and corpsman who worked for me were outstanding individuals.”
The Bronze Star Medal can be given for both meritorious and valorous actions in a combat zone. The medal was first proposed and created in 1944 by Gen. George C. Marshall. It was created in response to the Air Medal given to members of the aviation community, and he felt a similar award should be given to members of the ground combat community. The medal consists of a ½ inch in diameter 5-point star and the back of the medal reads, “Heroic or meritorious achievement.”