By Debbie Ross-Preston, For Peninsula Daily News
FORKS – Calm. Chaos. That’s the dizzying yo-yo of combat in Iraq, said Sgt. Matthew Breed of Forks, who was awarded the Bronze Star Medal in September.
“It goes from quiet to chaos in the blink of an eye. There is no in-between,” said Breed, an Army Reserve combat engineer and former Marine who returned to Forks in September.
Breed, 25, received the Bronze Star, one of the military’s highest awards for meritorious service in combat, in a ceremony at Fort Lewis.
It came after he spent a year in and around two of Iraq’s most dangerous cities at the time, Fallujah and Ramadi in Al Anbar province.
His job as a combat engineer with the Idaho-based 321st Engineer Battalion was to help clear roadside bombs to protect civilians and other military traffic and provide protection from attacks for those working on the bombs.