Army Spc. Sean Ambriz honored for valor in Afghanistan
Spc. Sean Ambriz, right, on dismounted patrol in Afghanistan
Army Spc. Sean Ambriz had just arrived back in the States after a year in Afghanistan last month when the plane he was in malfunctioned. It was a commercial airliner flying out of Maine, headed to Colorado – Ambriz was headed back to Fort Carson – and one of its engines stopped working.
The plane turned around almost immediately after takeoff. People in the jet screamed when they saw flames coming from the engine. Ambriz and his buddy, Spc. Mike Brown, were nonplussed. They’d both been in so many firefights during the last 12 months that that they could classify the different sounds different bullets made as they whizzed by.
“We were like, ‘Damn, coming back from war and we’re going to die going home,” Ambriz said.
As the planeload of civilians panicked, the two soldiers couldn’t help but laugh.
“We are so used to danger, so used to death, that we had are hands in the air and were going, ‘Whooo!’” Ambriz said.
They landed safely, and eventually Ambriz made it back to Fort Carson. Two weeks ago, he came home to Redondo Beach. Ambriz, 21, arrived a much different man than the one who left home two years ago.
“He’s different,” said his father, Joseph Ambriz. “He’s grown up. I am very proud of him.”
Spc. Sean Ambriz winning “hearts and minds” in Afghanistan.
He is also now a highly decorated war veteran. He was awarded a Purple Heart, an Army Achievement Medal, a Combat Action Badge, a Driver’s Badge, and an Army Commendation Medal. Perhaps most significantly, he earned one of the armed forces’ most esteemed honors – a Bronze Star with the “V-device,” awarded for valor during combat.
Ambriz earned his Bronze Star for his role in a rescue mission last September 10. Ambriz is part of a military company but he is also trained as a medic. In that capacity he was sent on a “Quick Reaction Force” mission to help cavalry scouts who were pinned down by Taliban snipers in a mountain valley. Two were wounded, and one was dead.
A team of eight men went after the downed men. They climbed more than 2,000 meters all the while taking intense enemy fire. The team was mistakenly told by radio that the men were at 200 meters, so they had little water or equipment. It took two hours to find the scouts, and then they had to run under the cover of white phosphorous mortar supplied by Kiowa helicopters to reach the fallen men without getting shot by snipers.
Still under constant fire, Ambriz treated the wounded and – without so much as a stretcher – he and his fellow soldiers carried both the wounded men and the dead man back down the mountain. They continued to take fire all the way; at one point, a rocket-fired grenade landed just above Ambriz and rock collapsed on top of him, dislocating his shoulder. The team didn’t make it back to their vehicles until after nightfall, dehydrated and exhausted. But they’d saved the lives of two men.
While he is honored by the awards he has received, Ambriz is quick to deflect attention. He credits his fellow soldiers with helping keep him alive and strong enough to keep facing danger day in and day out.
“Honestly, the awards are nice, but I wouldn’t have any of these awards if it wasn’t for my guys,” Ambriz said.
Ambriz is not allowed to identify exactly where he served except to say the mountains of northeast Afghanistan, which includes some of the most intensely contested, violent areas in the country – including the Korangel Valley, known in-country as “the Valley of Death.” Ambriz and his MP squadron were mainly tasked with training the Afghan National Police, escorting convoys, protecting camps, and occasional QRF missions. They lived mostly in small outposts from which they conducted hundreds of missions.
Ambriz graduated from RUHS in 2007 and was an avid football player. He played a semester at El Camino before realizing he wanted to join the military and prepare himself for a career in law enforcement. He enlisted Feb. 14, 2008, and was sent to Afghanistan in May the following year.
“It has changed my whole outlook on life, going over there and working,” Ambriz said. “I’m not a medic, but sometimes I filled that role as a medic or an EMT, a combat lifesaver…and I’ve seen a lot of people injured and in pain. That type of thing changed me the most – I’ve just seen the hurt in people’s eyes. And it’s also the little things I took for granted before – sometimes going a week or two without a shower or hot food. Those 3 a.m. missions – I took sleep for granted. Sleep is a big thing. And the fun people I have at home – you know, playing video games or whatever. We find a pile of mattresses and it’s the most fun thing ever.”
After they were delayed in Maine, Ambriz and some of his fellow soldiers marveled at some the simpler pleasures – like the hotel mattresses that didn’t have springs sticking up out of them, so plush that the men could hardly sleep on them. They also couldn’t wait to eat real American food.
“As soon as we got our boots on the ground we ate at Dunkin’ Doughnuts and Pizza Hut both within the span of an hour,” he said, laughing.
One of the big differences in this war, compared to previous wars, is that soldiers are better able to stay in touch with their families via computers and even telephones. Ambriz made frequent posts on Facebook. One, for example, showed what happened when he and his guys did indeed find a pile of mattresses (think flying, giggling soldiers) outside an outpost.
“We were really lucky to have computers out there,” Ambriz said. “Just being able to talk to family made the days go faster, and it keeps you connected with what’s going on back home. I really don’t know how guys back in the other wars did it….I give a lot of credit to war veterans before us.”
Something happened on Facebook, in fact, that may have changed Ambriz’s life. He met a friend of a friend, a woman, whom he corresponded with via the Internet and who has now inspired him for what waits after military life. Her name is Christina, she is from Redondo Beach, and Ambriz is head over heels for her.
“We’d been talking for three months when I was still in Afghanistan, and I saw here for the first time at Union Cattle Company,” Ambriz said. “I walked in, it was all dramatic – everything slowed down, it was dark room, and her back was to me at the bar. I didn’t know what to do – honestly, I was more nervous meeting her than getting on the plane and going to war. That is a trip…Then we sat down at the bar and I was so stunned, because she is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It’s just ridiculous. Oh my god, just thinking about her now is the biggest motivator – she motivates me to be the best at what I do.”
“Who she is makes me even want to be a better soldier,” he added. “She is the most independent person I’ve ever met, and she pushes me to my limits, to raise my game, to better myself as a person….All I want to do is go back and hit the gym twice as hard, hit the books twice as hard, to build myself – whether with school or books or finances – but to build myself up so we can look at each other and say, ‘What do you got?’”
He said her presence in his life also made coming home easier. A lot of soldiers won’t admit it, he said, but it’s not easy transitioning from war to peace. He still finds himself looking around, expecting to see one his guys “do something funny or something stupid to cheer me up.” He also has memories he’d rather not dwell on. But he looks at Christina and he sees a bright future, not a violent past.
“She’s been like my aid for recovery,” Ambriz said. “She makes it that much easier to come home.”
Ambriz calls Afghanistan “the beautiful disaster” and says he feels a sort of love/hate relationship with the country. It isn’t what people think, he said, nor is the war effort itself. He said there is a distorted view of the war that emerges in media coverage because the smaller, less dramatic, positive developments are not news.
“People are dying, and bad things happen, but at the same time a lot of good things are happening,” he said. “Yes, there are people getting shot and killed and wounded, but they don’t show good pictures, soldiers helping little kids, or building a school, or training army or police. There is more good stuff happening, actually, than bad.”
He doesn’t have an opinion about the politics of the war. He said that regardless of whatever the political debate is, he will do what he is asked to do.
“Our sole mission is to build up the country,” Ambriz said. “It just so happens the Taliban is over there trying to stop us from doing that. I am not a general and I don’t plan this stuff out, I just go out and do it. But what I see and what I know is we are not there to kill anybody, not even to fight the Taliban – we are there to help people, and it so happens that they are trying to stop us. But we are going to continue to try to help that country.”
He said it is frustrating how little people in the U.S. pay attention to what is occurring in Afghanistan. But he admits prior to going there he was one of those people. It’s one of many things that have changed. He has also learned how lucky it is to live in America.
“I am trying to expand my military education and expand my adult life overall,” he said. “I threw myself out into the real world at 19. I don’t regret it or anything, but it’s definitely been a life-changing experience, going over there and seeing things and seeing another culture and coming home and seeing how it works compared to Afghanistan. I get a little frustrated, especially seeing people whine about the smallest things. In Afghanistan, kids play with rocks and mud and kites they make themselves. Kids here whine when they can’t have a car.”
Ambriz said he’s learned not to sweat the small stuff.
“It’s kind of like, ‘Hey, if my life could end at any minute, be on your best game, be on your toes, doing the right thing at all times, being mature, making the best decisions,’” he said. “Because you have a lot of choices to make, forks in the road, go right or go left. Every day in Afghanistan you have choices….and it’s not all about life and death. It’s more about being mature and keeping a military bearing and professionalism. It forces you to grow up.”
See the Oct. 22, 2009 cover story.