FORT SILL, Okla. – Soldiers of Battery B, 1st Battalion, 158th Field Artillery Regiment, 45th Field Artillery Brigade, received the 2021 Alexander Hamilton Award July 16 for being the best field artillery battery in the National Guard.

The award is named after founding father Alexander Hamilton, who served as a key assistant to George Washington and as an accomplished artilleryman in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

“The Hamilton Award was established in 2002 and is awarded annually for superb mission accomplishment and overall unit excellence to the best Field Artillery Battery across the entire Army National Guard,” said Brig. Gen. Andrew Preston, commandant of the United States Army Field Artillery School.

Preston said the Soldiers of Battery B were selected to receive the award over the roughly 140 other artillery batteries in the National Guard. 

The battery was deployed to Afghanistan in 2021 in support of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and was the last National Guard battery to fire volley artillery in Afghanistan, said Preston.

“It’s a huge honor. We’ve done a lot of training,” said Capt. Zebadiah Wilson, commander of Battery B. “We executed a very intense mission in Afghanistan in 2021, so it’s a culminating event being able to come together and get an award for all the events and activities that took place in that deployment.”

It was no easy task to stand out among all the batteries in the National Guard, but the Soldiers of Battery B met that challenge.

“You don’t win an award for being the best National Guard field artillery unit without working, without training hard, and training to standard, and training the way National Guard Soldiers are expected to train,” said Staff Sgt. Mykle Bull, unit administrator for Battery B.

In addition to the responsibilities and hardships of their deployment, Soldiers of Battery B upheld their commitment to always be ready to help the people of their communities in Oklahoma.

Bull said Soldiers who are assigned to be a rear detachment have dealt with tornadoes, floods and other natural disasters throughout the years, even while the rest of their unit is deployed.

“A lot of these Guardsmen joined because they want to help their state,” said Bull. “Yes, they want to be warfighters, they want to go deploy, they want to fight the country’s battles, but at the end of the day, they’re parts of this community, so it matters to them when there’s other members of the community struggling. It feels just as good to assist with the tornado recovery or assist stranded motorists as it does to go be a Soldier downrange.”