Our Arklahoma Hereos: A highly decorated Green Forest Navy SEAL was among 39 killed in 2011 crash
In the quiet hills of northwestern Arkansas, where Green Forest sits tucked among the Ozarks, a boy named Thomas Arthur Ratzlaff grew up with one fixed idea.
Born November 3, 1976, in nearby Harrison to Nancy Ann Anderson Ratzlaff and Benjamin Arthur Ratzlaff, he told people early that he would become a Navy SEAL.
He played middle linebacker for the Green Forest Tigers, earned a reputation for putting everything into whatever he tried, and graduated from Green Forest High School in 1995. Weeks later he enlisted in the Navy, leaving the small town of a few thousand people for Recruit Training Command at Great Lakes, Illinois.
After basic training he completed gunner’s mate school and served aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd from 1996 until 1998. That same year he entered the Naval Special Warfare pipeline. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training at Coronado, California, in December 1998, completed Army Jump School at Fort Benning the following January, and reported to SEAL Team Two at Little Creek, Virginia.
With Team Two he deployed to Kosovo in 1999. In April 2003 he screened and was selected for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the unit publicly known as SEAL Team Six. He joined Gold Squadron and remained there for the rest of his career.
Over the next eight years, Senior Chief Ratzlaff completed twelve combat deployments, nine of them to Afghanistan and one to Iraq. He advanced from petty officer to senior chief while operating at the tip of special operations.
His record accumulated five Bronze Star Medals with Combat “V” devices (the fifth awarded posthumously), the Purple Heart, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, two Joint Service Commendation Medals, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, the Combat Action Ribbon, three Presidential Unit Citations, the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, five Navy Good Conduct Medals, campaign medals for Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary and Service Medals, eight Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, the NATO Medal, and expert rifle and pistol badges. He also earned the Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist qualification.
One action stood out even among those decorations. On November 26, 2008, during a joint operation with Canadian forces in Afghanistan, Senior Chief Ratzlaff reinforced an assault against a fortified enemy machine-gun position. After repeated attempts failed to silence the weapon, he advanced alone through heavy fire, entered the position, and neutralized it while facing nearly point-blank return fire.
The citation for Canada’s Star of Military Valour, the country’s second-highest award for valor in combat, recorded that he deliberately placed himself in harm’s way and that his actions saved countless lives. He remains the only non-Canadian ever to receive the decoration. It was presented in 2010.
Another Bronze Star citation, for the period March through July 2010, described him as a reconnaissance team leader on multiple direct-action missions. On the night of April 4, 2010, he led a sniper team during a raid against a heavily armed foreign fighter commander. When an enemy sentry engaged the assault force, he eliminated the sentry from an adjacent rooftop.
Moments later, several fighters inside the target building opened a heavy volume of small-arms fire. Senior Chief Ratzlaff held his position under that fire, returned fire until the enemy was suppressed, and contributed to the elimination of the targeted individual and additional fighters.
By the summer of 2011, he had told family he intended to retire after the current deployment and come home to Green Forest. He was 34, married nearly fourteen years to Andrea, and the father of two sons, then ages eleven and six. A daughter was due in November.
On the night of August 5–6, 2011, a platoon of Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment had been inserted into the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province to capture or kill a local Taliban commander named Qari Tahir. The Rangers made contact, the enemy fled deeper into the valley, and commanders decided to insert a quick-reaction force ahead of them to cut off the escape.
The force centered on fifteen operators from Gold Squadron, along with additional Naval Special Warfare support personnel, three Air Force special tactics airmen, Afghan partner force soldiers, an interpreter, and a military working dog. They boarded a single CH-47D Chinook, call sign Extortion 17, flown by a mixed Army Reserve and National Guard crew.
Shortly before 2:39 a.m. local time on August 6, as the helicopter slowed on its final approach to a landing zone in the valley, Taliban fighters in a two-story building roughly 220 meters south fired rocket-propelled grenades. One round struck an aft rotor blade, destroying the rotor assembly.
The aircraft crashed and exploded within seconds. All 38 people and the military working dog aboard were killed. It remains the single largest loss of life in the history of Naval Special Warfare and the deadliest incident for U.S. Special Operations Command in the Afghanistan war.
Among the fifteen Gold Squadron SEALs was Senior Chief Thomas A. Ratzlaff. His remains were recovered and buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 60.
He was posthumously awarded a fifth Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” device, the Purple Heart, and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.
