“I Have 3 Minutes Before I Die. I Need to Do Something Big.”

Grim Situation in a Taliban-Occupied Village

The situation looked grim as the team of 30 U.S. Special Forces and Afghan commandos found themselves trapped in a Taliban-occupied village on October 5, 2009.

The soldiers, tasked with hunting down a Taliban leader, came under rifle and sniper fire from multiple directions. Some of the enemy had fortified themselves on rooftops and crawled to within a few meters of the Special Forces.

Robert Gutierrez: The Last JTAC

During the ensuing four-hour firefight, SSgt Robert Gutierrez, the team’s only JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller), was struck in the left shoulder by an armor-piercing round. Gutierrez barely managed to return fire and take out the attacker before collapsing and calling for help. The bullet had pierced his shoulder, chest, triceps, and back muscles, narrowly missing his heart, and left an exit wound larger than a tennis ball. His punctured lung collapsed and filled with blood, nearly suffocating him. A medic rushed to perform an emergency needle decompression just in time, but Gutierrez remained in critical condition.

As time was running out, the medics urged Gutierrez to remove his body armor so they could treat his other wounds. Gutierrez refused, because removing it would also mean disconnecting the radio he needed to coordinate air support.

“I thought to myself: I have three minutes before I’m going to die. I’ve got to do something big.”

“Something big” meant coordinating multiple precise airstrikes from A-10 Warthogs and F-16 fighter jets and calling in his own MedEvac helicopter as well. That firepower let the team break contact, with Gutierrez insisting on walking out on his own after losing more than 2 liters of blood. Pilots later reported that he directed the aircraft over the area with exceptional clarity and focus, even with those injuries. He survived and was awarded the Air Force Cross for his actions.