Time did not stand still when the bomb exploded beside the armored Stryker vehicle in front of him. The war around him did not fade into the periphery of his senses.

Army Staff Sgt. David Plush, who grew up in Riverton, heard every bullet that whizzed passed him, just as clearly as heard the Stryker�s driver yelling that he was still alive.

Adrenaline and 13 years of training took over as the sounds echoed in Plush�s ears. A soldier had survived - one soldier out of eight passengers - and the soldier needed help.

�You always plan for different scenarios, but when you actually see something like that, it�s really different,� Plush told the Star-Tribune Wednesday in a telephone interview from Fort Lewis, Wash.

�For a while, I thought about it all the time. It was constantly going through my mind.�

Today, Plush will be awarded the Silver Star for his actions on that day, May 6, in Baqubah, Iraq. Under enemy fire, he ran across open ground to retrieve tools to rescue the soldier.

Since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Army has awarded fewer than 250 soldiers the Silver Star - the fourth highest military decoration. The Star-Tribune could find no evidence that any other soldier with Wyoming roots has earned one.

�I am so proud of him, it�s hard to put into words. He doesn�t like to brag about it, but if I could, I�d have a T-shirt made - �My husband won a Silver Star" - and I�d wear it wherever I went,� said Jackie Plush, David�s wife of 12 years. The two first met at the Fremont County Fair in Riverton.

On May 6, Plush was in the middle of his second tour in Iraq. (He earned a Purple Heart during his first in 2004 when his Stryker hit a car bomb. He sustained second- and third-degree burns on his hands.)

Plush's group was working in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala Province, when they heard that enemy fighters were planting a bomb in a nearby road. Soldiers piled into their Stryker vehicles - 20-ton machines armed with cannons, anti-tank missiles and heavy machine guns - to do what they had been trained to do.

Plush saw it happen.

A bomb exploded with such force that the Stryker in front of him flipped and landed upside-down. In a story published in the Los Angeles Times, soldiers said the blast twisted the Stryker into a heap of metal and engulfed it in thick smoke. Body parts of the Stryker�s passengers were strewn in every direction.

Plush knew the soldiers. One was a fellow squad leader, one had been on Plush�s team during their last deployment, one had come to their team just three weeks earlier. One was his gunner, another his assistant gunner.

Plush was among the first to hit the ground. Gunfire sounded almost immediately - it was an ambush.

He abandoned cover and ran through open ground to fetch a fire extinguisher. The Stryker�s driver, Spc. Larry Clark, screamed that he was alive.

Enemy fighters had concealed themselves in a mosque across the street and fired at the Americans. The Americans fired back. The crossfire pinned Plush as he returned with the fire extinguisher, and he called out so American soldiers would shoot up toward the mosque instead of in his direction.

All of the other seven passengers of the Stryker had died - six soldiers and one embedded photographer. The Los Angeles Times reported that it is the largest casualty count inflicted on a Stryker vehicle to date.

Plush got to the destroyed Stryker to see that Clark�s hand was pinned under some bars. They would need a jack to lift it off and free Clark.

Plush ran back through the bullets to fetch a jack. It took about two hours to pull Clark from the wreckage. Plush estimates an hour of that was under enemy fire.

They later uncovered six or so dead enemy fighters. But Plush figures more had run away.

�We had pretty much taken care of business, so they weren�t going to stick around.�

After the fight, Jackie Plush said, her husband collapsed from exhaustion.

She knows the story inside and out. And it�s easier to be proud now that her husband is safe at home. But it was hard to let him go back to Iraq after he was hurt the first time, and when he finally told her what had happened, she didn't like the sound of him running through bullets.

�He disregarded his own safety and ran up there to get that driver out,� she said. �It just puts shivers down my spine. I just see him running and getting shot at. It�s crazy.�

Plush returned home to Fort Lewis, Wash., in September after 15 months in Iraq. He was met by his three children - Ashley, 13, Cole, 10, and Mikayla, 9 - who were surprisingly tall. By then, they were all old enough to understand where Daddy had been.

�The youngest one surprised me the most. She outgrew my son and my oldest," Plush said.

"They all act like they are a lot older. They�ve had to deal with some stuff, too. But God, they�ve gotten so big.�

For several days, Plush was on cloud nine - so happy to be home it was like he was high, he said.

But the pace of war was hard to shake. He was an infantryman - a job that has no civilian counterpart. He and his men were the ones running up and down the hills with weapons and 80- to 150-pound rucksacks.

�We�re the front line of everything. We�re the guys leading the charge,� he said.

At home, Plush felt like he still had to go 100 miles per hour.

On Wednesday, Fort Lewis held a memorial service for all of the lost soldiers of the 3rd Brigade this deployment - 48 of them. Plush�s company - Alpha Company - lost eight itself.

Today, Plush and six other brigade soldiers will be awarded Silver Stars, one posthumously. His parents, Dennis and Linda Plush of Riverton, and his brother and two sisters traveled to Fort Lewis for the ceremony.

So, yeah, it�s a pretty big deal. And Plush realizes it�s a big deal.

He also thinks he only did what he had to do, what any soldier would do, what his training taught him to do.

The 3rd Brigade will likely return to Iraq in a year or two, Plush said. But he has been selected to attend drill sergeant training and likely won�t go with them.

�Before I left over there, it was kind of weird. I was anxious to get home, but almost wanting to stay because we didn�t complete the job.

�But now that I�m home, I�m glad that I�m not going back. Two times is enough for me.�