Another Medal of Honor nominee says he does not feel like a hero

MoH nominee says he does not feel like a hero
By Dan Lamothe - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Nov 23, 2010 15:50:35 EST
He’s not a hero. Over and over, that’s what former Cpl. Dakota Meyer tells people who ask him about the ambush last year in eastern Afghanistan that led to the death of three Marines, a Navy corpsman and a U.S. soldier.

He didn’t respond any differently than many other Marines would have, the scout sniper says. He simply did his job.

The Marine Corps doesn’t see it that way. In an exclusive, Marine sources told Marine Corps Times that the service has made a formal recommendation that Meyer receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor. Gen. James Conway pushed the recommendation up to the Navy Department shortly before retiring as commandant Oct. 22, a source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Pentagon does not allow officials to discuss military awards before decisions are finalized. Marine Corps Times first broke the story online Nov. 8.

The award still must be approved by the Navy Department, the Defense Department and the White House. If it makes it that far, Meyer, 22, would become the first Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor during the war in Afghanistan. No living Marine has received the award since 1970, during the Vietnam War.

Meyer, a 5-foot-11, 225-pound former high school linebacker with a soft Kentucky twang, sandy-brown hair and a quick wit, still struggles with what happened during the ambush. He left the Corps in June, and now wears a bracelet on each wrist, each engraved with the names of two friends who didn’t make it out of the firefight alive.

On Sept. 8, 2009, he charged into a kill zone on foot and alone near the remote, Taliban-controlled village of Ganjgal, in Kunar province, to find four fellow members of Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8, who had gone missing in a fierce firefight, according to military documents obtained by Marine Corps Times earlier this year. They were attacked in an early-morning ambush by about 150 well-fortified insurgents armed with machine guns, AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
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MOH nominee says he does not feel like a hero/