Pte Michelle Norris (Chuck), 19, from the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to C Company 1st Battalion The Princess Of Wales Royal Regiment.
[Picture: Cpl Anthony Boocock RLC]
Private Michelle Norris, 19, from Stourbridge, West Midlands, climbed on top of a Warrior armoured vehicle to reach her vehicle commander who had been injured during a fire fight in Maysaan Province in June.
Private Michelle Norris, known as ‘Chuck’, was part of a Warrior patrol in support of the Iraqi Security Forces in Al Amarah, Maysaan Province, which came under attack while it was trying to recover another Warrior that had become stuck in a ditch.
Private Norris described her reaction to the incident:
"It brought it home to me and I realised why I was here. It was my first casualty since training, which was pretty scary. On arrival at the scene, we stopped and when I heard ‘dings’ off the Warrior, I thought it was stones.
"Then I heard the turret get hit, so I got onto the intercom and asked ‘is anyone hit then?’ but there was no answer. All of a sudden, the driver [Private Nani Ratawake] shouted down to me that my commander had been hit.
"I didn’t know where he’d been shot and how bad it was at this stage. So I jumped out the back of the Warrior, climbed up on top of the turret, looked down, and saw the extent of his injuries.
"Private Norris acted completely selflessly and, in the face of great danger, concentrated on her job and saved someone else’s life."
Lieutenant Colonel David Labouchere MBE
Under fire
"I then heard the crack and a thump of a round going past my head. I was under fire from a sniper, which luckily just missed me.
"Ratawake pulled me down head first into the turret. A round went over and hit a battery which was at my knee height, so if he hadn’t pulled me down at that point, my knee or my leg would have been shot.
"We managed to cross the turret and get my commander into the back, where one of the lads put a sweat rag over him. I got through and administered first aid, put a dressing on and checked his vital signs."
The Warrior driver, Private Nani Ratawake, known as ‘Destroyer’, then drove to the helicopter landing point to take the casualty to a military field hospital.
Commenting on the actions of Pte Norris, her Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel David Labouchere MBE, said:
"Private Norris acted completely selflessly and, in the face of great danger, concentrated on her job and saved someone else’s life. She is part of a larger team, all of whom are acquitting themselves admirably when faced with danger."
As the only female in C Company, she gets on with the lads.
"It’s good," she concluded. "I’ve always been one of the lads anyway. Most of my friends in ‘Civvy Street’ have always been lads, and I always used to play football at school, so it’s alright, I get on with them."
Private Norris, from the Royal Army Medical Corps, only recently qualified as a medic and is currently serving on her first tour of Iraq. She is attached to C Company 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment (PWRR), normally based in Paderborn, Germany. 1 PWRR are currently half way through a six-and-a-half month tour of Iraq as part of 20th Armoured Brigade, and are due to return home to Paderborn in November.