Free Republic

The words still turn stomachs 20 years later: "No survivors." Malinda Parris was preparing to welcome her husband home for the holidays from a mission in Egypt when she first heard them. She had decorated the house, baked wildly to fill the kitchen with his favorite foods and was dressing to go to a homecoming ceremony at Fort Campbell. All that stopped when the television flashed with news that would change her life. A plane carrying her husband, Rudy, an Army pilot, and 247 other soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai had...

502nd soldier has division's first Iraq war Silver Star Pvt. Dwayne Turner doesn't think he's a hero. But the Army says otherwise and awarded him the Silver Star Thursday. The medic with Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, saved the lives of 16 soldiers in Iraq on April 13 despite being critically wounded himself. In a ceremony at Fort Campbell's division headquarters, Assistant Division Commander (operations) Brig. Gen. Frank G. Helmick pinned Turner with the highest medal given thus far to 101st Airborne Division soldiers serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom. "I didn't figure myself a hero. I just wanted...