Lt Col Jeffrey Price Awarded Meritorious Service Medal

Charleston, WV – Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Price, a West Virginia National Guard Deputy Commander and Pocahontas County resident has been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, 1st Oak Leaf Cluster. Price explains the position that earned him this high honor.

“I was the 151 [st] Military Police Battalion Commander from May of 2009 until June of this year” says Price. “As Battalion Commander, I was responsible for the 585 soldiers within the Battalion – they’re spread across West Virginia in several locations.”

According to a press release from the WV National Guard, the award was bestowed in honor of Prices’ outstanding leadership of the Battalion. The Meritorious Service Medal was officially approved in January of 1969 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The award was created to give the proper acknowledgement for noncombat achievement or service, equivalent to the Bronze Star for combat service.

Price says last year was a busy one for his soldiers.

“Last winter we had a lot of state active with the two snowstorms and the flood, so the Military Police Battalion lead the way in first people out the door and also the most troops on the ground responding to those natural disasters” says Price.

“We responded to the first snowstorm in mid December and we worked that for about 7 days” he says “and I was involved in that personally.”

He says after the second big snowstorm hit in early 2010, he had to move his Battalion headquarters from Charleston to the Martinsburg Armory. He explains what they did during their 7 to 10 day stay in the eastern panhandle.

“We were delivering food and aid, going house to house checking on individuals” says Price. “If there were folks that had medical emergencies we’d break the trail in and bring them out to a road where the ambulance could get to them, deliver medicine, and we provide traffic control when needed. A lot of missions going out checking on folks.”

This is actually the second Meritorious Service Medal Price has received. His first medal was for his Command of the WV 35th Civil Support Team, a highly skilled division of the National Guard devoted to dealing with weapons of mass destruction. He was commander of the 35th CST for three and a half years.

He is now the Deputy Commander for the Joint Interagency Training and Education Center, based at Camp Dawson in Preston County. He explains the mission of the center.

“Two roles, one is the training for military first responders around the nation and the other is doing assessments on critical facilities for [the] Dept of Homeland Security and for DoD [Dept of Defense]” says Price. “The majority of the work that we do is outside of the state of West Virginia in the other 53 states and territories.”

Price says the National Guard has been a rewarding career for him. Apparently, the National Guard feels the same about him.