Operation Epic Fury Purple Hearts: Three Soldiers Acted Under Fire to Save Lives

Three U.S. Army soldiers received Purple Hearts for their actions during the Operation Epic Fury Purple Hearts ceremony on Oct. 1 at Fort Hood, Texas, after a ballistic missile struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 27, wounding them and killing their immediate cover. Despite losing consciousness in the blast, Staff Sgt. Kalob Mitchell, Spc. Nicholas Cabo and Sgt. Xavier Jones treated the critically injured around them before evacuating the bunker.

The Strike and What Followed in the Bunker

A 550-pound ballistic missile detonated yards from a bunker at Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia, filling it with dust and debris. Mitchell described the moment plainly: “We’re sitting there talking, and then all of a sudden, we didn’t hear anything, no sound at all. Everything went black, so we were hit.”

All three soldiers were thrown against the bunker’s interior wall and lost consciousness. They received their initial medical evaluation later that day at the Role 2 Medical Facility on base.

Mitchell recounted what happened when he came to: “Woke up, checked on them. They were good. At that time, we heard screams from the opposite side of the bunker. Two Soldiers, I’m not too sure who they were, who had significant injuries; ran over there, applied tourniquets, T Triple C [Tactical Combat Casualty Care], everything.”

The three applied a tourniquet to a severely wounded soldier, treated another with a neck injury, and kept a disoriented soldier safe until the bunker could be evacuated. They then carried casualties to an ambulance. The release notes the group speculated that one soldier could have lost their leg, or their life, without that intervention.

Capt. Tyler Ritter, commander of 6-56 ADAR, 1st Cav. DIVARTY, relayed a message from one of the injured: “Sir, your Soldiers saved my life. I thank God every day that these gentlemen survived. Their actions brought great credit upon the 6-56 Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division and III Armored Corps. These Soldiers are my heroes. May God bless them.”

Operation Epic Fury Purple Hearts in the Broader Context of the Air War

The March 27 strike was not an isolated event. Defense News reported that on March 13, five KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft were damaged on the flight line at Prince Sultan Air Base, citing two U.S. officials. The base has been a focal point of Iranian targeting of U.S. logistics and airpower infrastructure throughout the campaign.

Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that six E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft had been stationed at Prince Sultan before the March 27 incident, per open-source flight tracking data. The same report, citing U.S. officials, puts the broader toll from Operation Epic Fury at over 300 service members wounded, 13 killed, and roughly 20 aircraft damaged across the air war.

U.S. Central Command commenced Operation Epic Fury at the direction of the President, with CENTCOM forces striking targets described as the Iranian regime’s security apparatus, prioritizing locations assessed as posing an imminent threat.

Mitchell, Cabo and Jones serve with the 6th Battalion, 56th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division Artillery. That unit was designated a new Stryker formation at Fort Cavazos, Texas, as of October 17, 2024, according to Army.mil, placing an air defense battalion built around a relatively new vehicle configuration into the middle of an active air-threat environment.

Jones captured the weight of the decoration without dressing it up: “So honestly, it’s kind of cool. I don’t think any of us was like going for a Purple Heart because it actually sucked. Like that situation was horrible … When I saw it on my STP [Soldier Talent Profile], I was like, man, I never would have thought I would have got a Purple Heart. I never thought I was going to see anything like we saw.”

Their actions were characterized in the official release as the “ultimate description of what we mean when we talk about warfighting, readiness, grit and taking care of our Soldiers.”

The award ceremony took place Oct. 1 at the III Armored Corps headquarters at Fort Hood, Texas. With the Department of Defense casualty count from Operation Epic Fury still rising, the three soldiers’ conduct under a strike that left them unconscious, and then immediately in triage mode, marks a concrete measure of what the operation is costing at the individual level, and what it is asking of the people inside those bunkers.