Marine vet awarded Bronze Star for Afghanistan heroism

Before he was crunching numbers as an accounting student, Robert Lopez was leading his Marines on patrols in Afghanistan. Now the former sergeant has been recognized A former Marine sergeant was recently awarded a Bronze Star with "V" for shielding his squad members fellow Marines from a makeshift grenade blast and repelling an enemy ambush while deployed during a 2010 deployment to southern Afghanistan.

Robert Lopez, 27, was awarded the Bronze Star with combat "V" device on Tuesday  who served as a rifleman and is now a student at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, received the nation’s fourth highest valor award for actions during a 2010 deployment to operations in Sangin with leading a squad in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines’ Lima Company.

Now a student at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Lopez was presented with the service's fourth-highest valor award The award, presented during a ceremony in front of his family’s restaurant, Las Americas Too, in Fort Smith, was humbling, he said.

"I think that was the best part," Lopez told Marine Corps Times. "Getting it in front of my parents and having my mom and dad come up and pin me — ," he said. "Iit was very personal."

Soon after deploying to Afghanistan as a fire team leader, Lopez's his squad leader was injured, so the  received a concussion, followed by another. So, Lopez responsibility was handed to himleadership of the squad. The Marines y conducted vehicle patrols in several areas of southern Afghanistan before arriving in Sangin to clear insurgents from the fertile area near the district’s river.

On It was a rough time in Sangin, and on Aug. 22, 2010, Lopez was preparing he prepared to enter a compound when an improvised grenade — a water bottle filled with explosives and fragmentation — was lobbed over a wall. He called it out and scrambled to get his Marines away, but one tripped. He picked the Marine up, but it was too late to run.

Lopez so turned to shield the fallen infantryman from the blast, and he and his Marines were sprayed with shrapnel; one was so seriously injured, he was sent home. y were peppered a one injured seriously enough to be shipped home. Lopez said later that evening, he squeezed a piece of metal out of his arm he still keeps today.

The Marines were eventually able to clear that y went on to clear the compound, and Lopez said they discovered that the owners found that owners were  finding that the family that owned it was being intimidated by Taliban fighters. The next day, as his squad was investigating another compound, they discovered a cache of weapons,  caches including explosives, Soviet weapons, magazines, and grenades. As they were collecting intelligence, they came under heavy fire from multiple positions.

"When I got outside and put my gear on to figure out the situation, I asked my post what was going on," Lopez said. "They said there were being suppressed, but they didn’t know where from. ," Lopez said. "As a leader, I couldn’t have that. I always told my guys that they would go home alive before I would, so I jumped on a wall."

He sprinted under direct fire across the top of the narrow wall, finally positioning himself to see that the fire was likely coming from a nearby treeline. Lopez He ordered his machine gunners to fire on the area and called in a mortar attack, acting as the spotter. By the second round, the enemy fire was silenced.

Five years later, when Lopez got the call that he would receive the Bronze sStar with "V," he said he knew he wanted to receive it in his hometown. It is great being promoted or receiving an award among Marine friends, but many civilians have never seen a ceremony, he said, and it was a piece of Marine culture he wanted to share.

First Sgt. Michael Hatlen and Maj. Rhett Hansen with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines, a Little Rock, Arkansas-based Reserve unit, attended the ceremony. After being pinned by his parents, Lopez he handed the award to his dad father.