For A Marine Hero, A Medal Of Honor
Just Regular American Guys!
“Shortly after dawn on a September morning in 2009, American and Afghan troops set out on patrol along a rocky mile-long stretch in eastern Afghanistan. They were heading to a small village for a routine meeting with tribal elders.
Suddenly, everything went wrong.
Cpl. Dakota Meyer and Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, who had stayed behind with the vehicles, heard small arms fire in the distance and knew instantly it was an ambush. Rodriguez-Chavez then heard an officer yelling for help on the radio.
“He said, ‘I have wounded here. I need to get them out of here. If I don’t get (backup) fires we’re all going to die here,’” Rodriguez-Chavez recalled.
So the Marines had to act. Meyer, then age 21, kept asking for permission to help the stranded troops, but the officers said no.
“And then finally, I requested one last time,” he said.
Again, the answer was no.
So Meyer and Rodriguez-Chavez decided on the spot to disobey orders.”
Meyer was anything but a failure. His actions, say military officials, saved more than a dozen Marines and two dozen Afghan soldiers.
Meyer was promoted to sergeant before he left the Marines, and is now living in his native Kentucky, where he is a construction worker. Rodriguez-Chavez is now a gunnery sergeant stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri, where he teaches troops how to drive Humvees and trucks.