By JOSEPH DITZLER
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: June 21, 2006)

WASILLA -- Reading of the deeds that earn a Silver Star will make the hair rise on the back of the neck.

A 22-year-old Wasilla Marine has such a story of his own to tell.

Sgt. Jarred L. Adams, a U.S. Marine scout sniper, received the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest military combat award, at a ceremony June 10. Lt. Col. Nicholas F. Marano presented Adams, of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, with his combat decoration that day at Camp Al Qa'im, Iraq.

The Silver Star goes to someone who demonstrates "gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States."

"I don't think I did anything any other Marine wouldn't do," Adams was quoted as saying in an online Marine News account posted June 10.

A 2002 graduate of alternative high school Valley Pathways, Adams enlisted July 30, 2001, and shipped out to boot camp in September 2002, said Staff Sgt. Albert Dervaes, at the time a Marine recruiter in Wasilla.

Dervaes said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he remembered Adams.

"He was one of those kids we didn't really have to keep tabs on. Some guys you really gotta baby-sit," Dervaes said.

"He sought us out," the recruiter recalled. "He was not somebody we bumped into at the mall."

Adams enlisted for the infantry and went on to become a scout sniper. It's a tough outfit to get into, Dervaes said. Applicants must score high on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and on the rifle range too.

Snipers are a very small group, Dervaes said.

Adams, who is serving in Iraq, earned his Silver Star in January 2005 in the city of Husaybah in the Al Anbar province, an insurgent hotbed near the border with Syria, according to the Marines' account online.

Insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a Humvee carrying Adams and several other Marines, according to the account written by Cpl. Antonio Rosas of the 7th Regimental Combat Team.

The attack killed one Marine and wounded others, including Adams, who was hit with shrapnel and burned by the disabled Humvee. Adams took position and returned fire.

Adams then returned, under fire, to the Humvee, removed the body of the fallen Marine and carried him back through an open intersection "while broadly exposed to enemy fire," Rosas wrote.

Back at headquarters, Adams finally sought treatment for his wounds.

"I am very proud that we can count on Marines like (Sgt.) Adams," Rosas quoted Marano, Adams' commanding officer, as saying. "He is an example of the kind of leaders we have in this battalion."