Civil engineer Airmen receive Bronze Star medals

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Shane Dunaway
  • 36th Wing Public Affairs
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam --  A company grade officer and an NCO from the 36th Civil Engineer Squadron received the nation's ninth-highest honor, the Bronze Star, during the wing promotion ceremony May 29 at the base theater.

Brig. Gen. Phil Ruhlman, 36th Wing commander, presented Capt. Raymond Kerr, 36th CES chief of construction management, and Tech. Sgt. Ronald White, 36th CES explosive ordnance disposal flight team leader, the medals for actions stemming from their respective deployments to Afghanistan.

Authorized Feb. 4, 1944, the Bronze Star Medal is awarded to members of all branches of military service and may be awarded either for combat heroism or for meritorious service.

While deployed, Sergeant White and his team were responsible handling many different categories of explosives in a combat environment, including finding and disarming improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordnances and cataloguing and tracking weapons found in weapons caches.

"Almost every EOD team leader is going to walk downrange, get within killing radius of a bomb, make it safe and save the world," said Sergeant White. "It's pretty common for EOD team leaders to come back from Afghanistan and Iraq tours with Bronze Stars."

Captain Kerr and his joint-deployed team of more than 15 members took on the task of constructing the Afghan National Army's and Afghan National Fleet's facilities, including their bases and police stations. These facilities allowed the ability to bed down more than 700 Afghan forces.

"[We're enabling them] to secure their own country," Captain Kerr said. "They don't have the engineers right now to build these facilities, so we're doing that for them and allowing them to focus on taking the fight out to the enemy."