This was during the battle of Tora Bora. I had just gotten into the Ranger Battalion a little over a month before that, and I was the smallest, ballsiest 19 year old Rudy-ripoff of the lower enlisted. Rangers lead the way (after the airstrikes of course), so my platoon was tasked to go into this tunnel filled with god knows what traps inside to clear it out.
Now the main tunnel is huge, but there are these side ventilation tunnels that are like built for kids, maybe a little bigger than 1' by 1', but we think it connects to another tunnel that opens at a great tactical vantage point. So guess who is volunteered to go in to clear that tunnel with just a flashlight and an M-9?
I'm like 100' in crawling through inches at a time, flashlight in one hand and the safety off pistol in the other hand. I'm working my way face first out into a bigger room (which I'm trying to figure out how to not fall unknown distance down from the ceiling) when a nearby sound spooks me and I gracelessly fall face first with a thud and a crack, break my shooting arm bracing for the fall, break my flashlight, and my M-9 goes off inside a big tunnel, telling any enemy where I am. And I am all alone in the pitch black.
A second later, I hear some very close yelling that is distinctly not English. Then I hear an engine start up nearby - like a huge engine. Then I see the light from someone else's flashlight maybe 20' away from me and can barely make out the source of that noise... a mother fucking T-72 main battle tank casually starting to drive down this tunnel getting ready to ambush and wipe out my whole company.
Well, I guess they sent the right guy, because I picked up the M-9 with my left hand, and as the flashlight guy sweeps the light towards me I put three shots right where his chest should be. Flashlight and that guy drop. More shouting, clanks of AK's getting magazines loaded and safeties turning off. Dude's flashlight just happened to land pointing at an RPG, and I see a light from inside the tank as a hatch opened. The thing was, there was no way I was going to survive an RPG blast 20' away inside a concrete tunnel which was going to be a shrapnel-richochet apocalpse. But I had to do it. Grabbed the RPG took the shot and started saying the Lord's Prayer.
Must have worked. When I woke up I was patched up by a Special Forces medic who was squeezing IV bags to get something liquid back into my veins. Took 2 years of physical therapy to walk again after that.
I told my story to the CO when he came to visit me, and he basically said "Bullshit", and I got no recognition. No Purple Heart, no Medal of Honor, not even a Bronze Star. Shit I only got 10% disability from the VA out of that. But I know if I hadn't been right there, right then half of my company would have been dead 5 minutes later.