The real Rambo who made a last stand on .50 cal, killing 50 men

This article recounts the heroic last stand of SFC Smith.
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When the average person thinks of Medal of Honor recipients, the idea usually conjures up images of men storming the beaches of Normandy or holding off an onslaught of enemy troops in Korea or Vietnam. Heck, some people only think of films such as Rambo. That’s just the world we live in.

However, it often slips the national consciousness that the US has been embroiled in nonstop conflict for fifteen years, with several US service members earning the Medal of Honor in Iraq and Afghanistan to date- eighteen to be exact.

One of those recipients was the first of four men to receive the MOH in the Iraq War, receiving it posthumously (as did all recipients in that particular conflict) after repelling an onslaught of Iraqi Republican Guard troops, killing over fifty of them before falling in battle.

A Florida native, 34-year-old Army Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith had 13 years and countless deployments as a combat engineer under his belt by the time his fateful last stand would take place. A member of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 11th Engineer Battalion, Smith was a platoon sergeant during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and was supervising the building of a detainee center at the Baghdad International Airport (to assist with the Coalition’s push into Baghdad) when his unit was attacked by over 100 Iraqi Republican Guard troops.