Sgt. 1st Class David Lowe and his Special Forces A-team were in their last week in Afghanistan on June 10, 2005, when their base received an urgent call: A small group of 82nd Airborne paratroopers was pinned down in a firefight near the Pakistan border and needed support.

"When you're that close to leaving the country and you've survived the whole time, you kind of stand down a little bit," said Lowe, 26, of Lancaster, Pa., recalling that much of the team's equipment was packed. "But they needed help," he said, "so we went," setting out on a mission that would prove vital and tragic.

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It was midafternoon last June when Lowe's team, accompanied by Afghan forces, began climbing a steep mountainside to reach the 82nd Airborne paratroopers fighting off pockets of enemy on all sides.

Lowe's team moved through the brush without talking. The sun cast shadows on the hills, making it difficult to see. Lowe was uphill providing cover ahead of Sgt. 1st Class Victor Cervantes, who walked below through a dry streambed, when fire from a Kalashnikov broke out near Cervantes's position.
Lowe turned and dashed back, catching a glimpse of a camouflage coat and a figure ducking between the trees and rocks. Lowe fired at it with his M-4 and the gunfire stopped. Then he began yelling, "Vic!" "Vic!" trying to find his teammate.

"So anyway, Vic was dead," Lowe recalled, choking up at the memory. But Lowe, the team medic, said he controlled an urge to charge blindly up the hill in revenge.

Instead, according to his medal citation, during a six-hour firefight, Lowe moved deliberately to aid the wounded — at one point dashing over 150 yards of open ground. He climbed an exposed rock pinnacle to shoot down a fighter who had a teammate pinned down, and helped kill six other attackers, including some who shot at the soldiers as they attempted to carry out Cervantes's body.

"We were a week from going home, and he's putting himself in harm's way — he's the real hero today," Lowe said of Cervantes, 27, of Stockton, Calif.