Nashua Native, One Other Awarded Purple Heart

On Aug. 31, the United States Army and the Montana Army National Guard recognized the service and sacrifice of two of their own in a ceremony in Kuwait. Sgt 1st Class Elmer "Moe" Mayhew, a Nashua High School graduate and member of Delta Company, 1-189th General Aviation Support Battalion, and his colleague, Sgt Jared Fossek, were awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in a rocket attack on Camp Taji, Iraq near Baghdad.

On March 14, 2020, a "Katyusha" rocket-or multiple rocket launcher-was used to bombard Camp Taji at around 10:50 a.m. injuring three American soldiers and two Iraqis, according to a press release posted to Twitter by the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve at the time. In total, 25 rockets struck the base that morning injuring only the five. According to Mayhew's father, who spoke to the Courier, one of the rockets impacted near his son, lifted him into the air and sent him head first into a wall causing the injuries that led to the medal.

Mayhew grew up in Valley County and graduated from Nashua High School in 2007. After graduation he enlisted in the Montana Army National Guard and has served ever since. In that time he has been assigned to the 1-189th GSAB based in Helena. The unit was deployed in October, 2019 for a two-month pre-deployment training followed by a deployment to "Southwest Asia," according to a post on the Montana Army National Guard Recruiting Facebook page at the time. The post also said they would be heading to an "undisclosed location."

The Purple Heart is the military's oldest medal still in service. Commissioned by George Washington as the "Badge of Military Merit" and designed as a piece of cloth in the shape of a purple heart, the award was changed in 1917 to the modern design and name following WWI. It is awarded to all wounded or killed in action U.S. Service Members operating in declared American-involved conflicts.

The DoD said that two of the soldiers wounded in the March 14 attack had been "seriously" wounded at the time and transported to Baghdad for care. It is unknown who the two seriously injured soldiers were. The Montana National Guard did not confirm whether the reported March 14 attack was the same attack in which sergeants Mayhew and Fossek were injured, but no other attacks injuring American soldiers were reported by the DoD that same day.

The public affairs units for American Forces in Iraq also said at the time that a follow-up Iraqi-led investigation had identified suspects shortly after the attacks and that arrests had been made. Follow-up information on those arrests was not immediately available.

The Military Times reported the attack followed a similar barrage three days prior that killed three American soldiers and one British soldier marking the deadliest attack on US soldiers in Iraq during 2020. That attack was, at the time, said to have been conducted by Kataib Hezbollah-an Iranian-backed terrorist group operating in the country-according to the Military Times. They were also a part of a larger series of attacks carried out in the country by Iranian-backed forces following the American airstrike that killed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani in early January 2020.

American Forces transitioned control of Camp Taji to Iraqi Security Forces in August 2020 as the US reduced the size of its forces in Iraq following a long-fought campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The campaign involved dozens of separate fighting factions, multiple countries and spanned both northern Iraq and eastern Syria.