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Guardsman gets his medal 13 years later
by Lisa McDonald · News · July 28, 2016
Army National Guard veteran Joe Gottschalk received his Combat Action Badge at a special Fourth of July presentation, 13 years after being deployed from Iraq.
“I was in the hospital when the unit came back,” Gottschalk said, “and while I was going through all my medical stuff, [my unit] actually disbanded and they re-conformed to a totally different unit.”
“So because of lost information and changing of units and everything else, [the Combat Action Badge] just never got awarded, or the information never got submitted for it,” Gottschalk said.
Spc. Gottschalk, originally from Tipton and now living in West Branch, served with the 2133rd Transportation Company at the Ayn al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq in 2003. During a delivery to a forward operating base Nov. 29, Gottschalk and his unit were ambushed returning to al-Asad.
A bullet shattered Gottschalk’s jaw during the attack. Gottschalk’s friend and fellow Tipton resident, Sgt. Aaron Sissel, died.
President George W. Bush awarded Gottschalk the Purple Heart in December 2003, but Gottschalk said he never received the Combat Action Badge, a badge awarded to those who saw combat while deployed.
Lara Barnhart, Gottschalk’s girlfriend, said the process that obtained the badge began when U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack awarded Gottschalk his military retirement papers in July 2014.
“At that event I asked Dave Loebsack ... what we needed to do, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure at the moment, but he looked into it and got back to us within the week and we got the ball rolling from there,” Barnhart said.
Barnhart said Gottschalk and she got in touch with a staff sergeant at Camp Dodge, but the sergeant’s promotion placed them back to square one. After gaining answers through another source, Barnhart said they needed to gather sworn statements from two other people that were on convoy with Gottschalk the day of the ambush.
“Given the circumstances of what happened that day, that’s not an easy feat to ask someone to relive those memories,” Barnhart said.
Barnhart said Gottschalk knew the military approved the badge, but he did not know the badge was physically in Iowa. Barnhart worked with National Disabled Veterans TEE Tournament Director Kirt Sickels and his assistant Kim Heeren to set up a surprise presentation of the badge during the first pitch of the Cedar Rapids Kernels game July 4.
Barnhart said even though the year and a half of paperwork it took to receive the badge felt like “forever, it’s nothing compared to what a lot of [veterans] go through” to receive the awards they “rightfully earned overseas.”
“I think it’s important to note to not give up,” Barnhart said.
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