22 (CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, N.M) Snapped awake by the sound of belt-fed machine gun fire, then-Senior Airman Alaxey Germanovich, a combat controller assigned to the 26th Special Tactics Squadron, surveys the compound he had dozed off in after several sleepless days of combat.
“I look around and I don’t see any of my American teammates,” said Germanovich. “(At that moment I said to myself) I need to find my friends right now.”
Grabbing his helmet and rifle, Germanovich bolted out of the compound and into the fight, where he saw several of the U.S. Army Special Forces Soldiers he was embedded with huddling for cover from behind a small rock.