Local soldier earns Bronze Star
A Spokane Army officer who has led soldiers through firefights and bombings in two of Iraq’s toughest cities has been awarded the Bronze Star medal for meritorious service.
In receiving the service medal, Maj. Michael Wright, a member of the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division who has served in Ramadi and Fallujah, was credited with “dedication, drive and leadership … instrumental to the success of the 1st Devil Brigade mission,” according to the citation accompanying his medal.
On Wednesday, Wright’s parents, Dick and Bev Wright of Spokane, provided a glimpse of the violence their son and others have endured in Iraq.
Wright, 36, has come under attack by roadside bombs, or what the Army calls improvised explosive devices, six times in the 13 months he served in Iraq, they said. On one occasion, an explosion that blew his Humvee sideways across the road damaged his hearing despite the use of ear plugs and “banged up his knee,” his father said.
“We are very proud of him and thankful he was able to come home without serious medical problems,” said Dick Wright, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Bev Wright is grateful her son is now back at Fort Riley, Kan., where he lives with his wife and three children.
“You knew when he left it would be heart-wrenching,” Wright’s mother said. “You want to watch TV because there is a chance you’ll see him. But you might see something you don’t want to see.”
Wright was responsible for the deployment to Iraq of his entire brigade, 3,000 soldiers in four weeks, according to the citation. Once the brigade entered combat, he planned operations and secured medical evacuation points. He also led a number of house searches and escorted ambulances to firefights.
“Under fire, he reacted calmly and efficiently, returning fire …” according to the citation.
Once, Bev Wright said her son told her, his patrol passed a Marine convoy that was stopped along the side of a road. A quarter-mile down the road, Wright heard an explosion and returned to find the Marines had been hit by a roadside bomb. One Marine had been “blown apart” and another injured. Wright’s soldiers gathered the remains of the dead Marine to bring back to their forward operating base.
“Sunday church service was what every one of us needed to quiet our hearts, our minds and our souls,” Wright told his mother.
But one Sunday, Wright sat next to a soldier in church who was killed moments after the service when the brigade’s base came under mortar attack by insurgents.
Each time someone in his brigade was killed, it was an emotional “double-edged sword,” Bev Wright said of her son.
“You are relieved to find out it wasn’t him. Then you realize that some other mother was getting the news.”
Wright, a 1986 graduate of Mead High School, received a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Washington University and a master’s degree at Gonzaga University, where he served as an ROTC instructor, his father said.