Fairchild special agent receives Bronze Star

Air Force Special Agent Gregg Gow received a Bronze Star on Tuesday, in part for remaining calm enough not to shoot approaching gunmen after his unit was attacked.

Gow, 32, a member of the Office of Special Investigations’ Detachment 322 at Fairchild Air Force Base, was on temporary duty in the Middle East last year.

OSI is the Air Force equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For security reasons, Gow can only describe his work in Iraq as investigating potential threats to U.S. and coalition forces based in northern Iraq.

The Air Force said Gow led a unit that identified several hundred insurgent threats, planned and executed multiple missions, and “neutralized scores of individual insurgents.”

One day last June, his unit was in a convoy outside their base when the lead vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb with multiple projectiles. In an instant, the mission went from normal to chaos, with loud explosions, dust and smoke, Gow said Tuesday in an interview.

He was in the convoy’s second vehicle, and could see the lead vehicle was rolling out of control. He told his driver to pull in front of the damaged vehicle to stop it, then to begin evacuating the wounded.

“A lot of it at that point, instinct kind of kicked in,” he said.

Through the smoke they saw armed men approaching. For an extremely tense moment, Gow had his troops hold their fire.

That was good, because they quickly realized the armed men were Iraqi military forces coming to provide aid.

“We actually knew some of them from working with the Iraqi forces,” he said.

Gow’s actions discouraged insurgents in the area from attempting a second attack and allowed his unit to recover wounded men, the Bronze Star citation said. He was commended for “exemplary leadership, personal endeavor and devotion to duty.”

The attack on the convoy occurred a year ago, but it often takes that long for reports to be processed and investigated, he said. A recommendation for a medal “goes through several levels of approval,” he added.

The delay also meant his family could be at the award ceremony at Fairchild, where Gow has been based for about three years. He grew up in the Sandpoint area and his parents still live there.

“It was a treat to receive it here at home where my family could attend,” he said.