Pictured, from left, are U.S. Army veterans Sabrina Schnarrenberg and her husband Jay Schnarrenberg in a bunker in Baghdad on Dec. 25, 2003. Sabrina Schnarrenberg was recently honored with an Army Commendation Medal for Valor presentation ceremony in the District of Columbia for rescuing two of her fellow soldiers from their vehicle after the convoy they were in came under enemy attack in Baghdad in 2003.

Pictured, from left, are U.S. Army veterans Sabrina Schnarrenberg and her husband Jay Schnarrenberg in a bunker in Baghdad on Dec. 25, 2003. Sabrina Schnarrenberg was recently honored with an Army Commendation Medal for Valor presentation ceremony in the District of Columbia for rescuing two of her fellow soldiers from their vehicle after the convoy they were in came under enemy attack in Baghdad in 2003.
By Megan Alley
Sun staff

The U.S. Army recently honored a village of Felicity resident with an Army Commendation Medal for Valor presentation ceremony in the District of Columbia for the heroic act she made when she rescued two of her fellow soldiers from their vehicle after the convoy they were in came under enemy attack in Baghdad in 2003.

Sabrina Schnarrenberg served on active duty in Wiesbaben, Germany from 2001 to 2005. As a non-commissioned officer, she was responsible for maintaining the training and medical records of the company. She also served as the resident doctor, as she had attended a year and a half of nursing school before joining the military.

During a 13-month deployment to Baghdad in 2003 and 2004, Schnarrenberg volunteered and served as the driver and combat medic for more than 750 convoys.

“I like doing things that most people would not expect,” she said. “I didn’t want to just sit there and stare at a piece of paper all day, I wanted to be out there, I wanted to be doing something, and I wanted to go see what was going on in the outside world.”

On Sept. 8, 2003, Schnarrenberg was convoying along with three other Humvees from Saydr City to Baghdad International Airport. She was headed to meet up with her husband, a U.S. Army soldier who was also serving in Baghdad; the two met in 2002 while they were both stationed in Germany, and they married on May 15, 2003, a week before they were deployed.

Schnarrenberg was driving the fourth, and last, Humvee in the line, and at about 8 p.m., they approached an underpass in Baghdad City.

Despite institutional warnings urging soldiers to avoid traveling through an underpass, the combat commander instructed the convoy to press ahead.

“He was determined to show the enemy that we weren’t afraid,” Schnarrenberg said. “So, we went under the overpass even with warnings not to.”

As the convoy passed under, two improvised explosive devices, one on the left side of the road and one on the right, detonated and “took out” the third vehicle.

“I rammed the vehicle in front of us to get us out from underneath the underpass, and when we came out from underneath the underpass, we were receiving small arms fire, which is handguns and AK-47s, from the top of the overpass,” Schnarrenberg explained.

Then, avoiding gunfire, Schnarrenberg ran from her vehicle to the damaged Humvee to rescue two wounded soldiers.

“One of them was the gunner – the turret gunner actually sticks out from the Humvee from the waist – and he had lost an arm. I got him evacuated into the second vehicle, which was the troop carrier,” she said. “The convoy commander had taken shrapnel to the face, and I got him evacuated to the second vehicle.”

Schnarrenberg immediately began administering first-aid, and the three remaining Humvees drove on to a combat hospital in the green zone.

The soldiers, who were part of an infantry unit that Schnarrenberg’s unit was attached to, were medevac’d to a hospital in Germany.

“I did not hear any more,” she added, referring to the soldiers’ recovery.

Upon reflection, Schnarrenberg said she doesn’t really remember what was going through her mind when she ran from her vehicle to rescue the two soldiers.

“It’s great training; that’s what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “You’re supposed to go, get them, and pull them out of harm’s way.”

She added, “I didn’t really even think about it until we had unloaded them at the combat hospital, and I looked down, and I was covered in blood; I started shaking.”

Schnarrenberg was concerned that her husband would begin to worry when she didn’t show up to meet him at the airport on time.

“I was worried about what my husband was going to think. I didn’t want him to not let me go on convoys anymore; I was worried about things like that,” she said. “My dad’s a Vietnam War veteran, and I didn’t want him to know how close I had been to that.”

She added, “I wasn’t worried about myself, I was just worried about my husband worrying about me and my family being worried about me.”

Schnarrenberg said it wasn’t until “much, much later” that she was able to process everything.

When it came to being recognized for her heroism, Schnarrenberg was originally denied an award, due to the fact that while she had already received two Army Commendation Medals; one for her service to the unit as training NCO and one honoring her regular service.

“Our battalion commander put a cap saying one soldier could not get more than two Army Commendation Medals,” she explained.

Regina “Molly” Jenks was Schnarrenberg’s company commander. Her first day on the job was the same day of the attack, and she lobbied for Schnarrenberg to receive a metal.

“[My story] stuck with her, so, after I left the military, she continued to fight for me to receive an award,” Schnarrenberg said.

She received a paper copy of the award two years after she left the military.

“But, [Jenks] wanted me to have ceremony; she wanted to be there with me,” Schnarrenberg said.

She and her husband traveled to D.C. for the ceremony, which was held on Aug. 20 at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

“That was incredible,” she said, adding, “We walked through Arlington Cemetery and we saw some graves of some friends of ours that we had deployed with.”

Schnarrenberg and her husband also met up with friends that they had not seen more than a decade.

“It was an amazing time,” she said.

Schnarrenberg was also thrilled to reunite with Jenks.

“Females were not always looked on very well,” Schnarrenberg explained. “She was the first female in a power position that I had ever met. I was her driver and I was her go-to person; she and I went through some really horrible times together.”

At 5 feet 2 inches, and at times one of only the two women on a post with 750 men, Schnarrenberg often struggled to be noticed and respected.

“It was like I was a ghost; nobody spoke to me, nobody made eye contact with me, because they didn’t want us there,” she said.

In addition to the recognition, Schnarrenberg said the award has also given her an opportunity to talk with her family and friends about the attack.

“We’ve known about what I did for a while, but we’ve never really sat down and talked about it,” Schnarrenberg said. “When I received the award and knew that I was going to be headed to Washington D.C., I went to a family reunion and told my family my story, which most of them had never even heard; were able to sit down and I told them what happened and a few other stories from my time in Baghdad.”

Despite having been through an extraordinary ordeal, Schnarrenberg remains humble about her experience. She volunteers at the Ohio Veterans Home in Georgetown to sit and talk with residents.

“They had it so much harder than us, so I hate to even talk about what I’ve gone through because it’s not nearly as much as what the Vietnam veterans and the World War II vets have been through, but it’s something that, if you’ve been there, you understand,” she said. “It’s a comradery; we didn’t even have to deploy together; I can understand.”

She added, “I appreciate everybody saying ‘thank you’ for your service, but it’s so much deeper than that whenever you have been through it, and you understand what a sacrifice it is.”