Dakota Meyer

Dakota Louis Meyer (born June 26, 1988) is a United States Marine.

In 2006, after graduation from Green County High School, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at a recruiting station in Louisville, Kentucky and completed boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.

Meyer deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2007 as a scout sniper with 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines.

He gained national attention for his actions in Afghanistan during his second deployment in Kunar Province with Embedded Training Team 2–8.

A veteran of the War in Afghanistan, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Ganjgal on September 8, 2009, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

Meyer is the second-youngest living Medal of Honor recipient, the third living recipient for either the Iraq War or the War in Afghanistan, and the first living United States Marine in 38 years to be so honored.

Meyer was born and raised in Columbia, Kentucky, the son of Felicia Carole Ferree "Killy" Gilliam and Michael Allen Meyer.

On September 8, 2009, near the village of Ganjgal, Meyer learned that three Marines and a Navy Corpsman, who were members of Meyer's squad and his friends, were missing after being ambushed by a group of insurgents.

Under enemy fire, Meyer entered an area known to be inhabited by insurgents and eventually found the four missing servicemen dead and stripped of their weapons, body armor and radios.

There he saw a Taliban fighter trying to take the bodies.

The fighter tackled Meyer, and after a brief scuffle, Meyer grabbed a baseball-sized rock and beat the fighter to death.

With the help of Afghan soldiers, he moved the bodies to a safer area where they could be extracted.

During his search, Meyer "personally evacuated 12 friendly wounded and provided cover for another 24 Marines and soldiers to escape likely death at the hands of a numerically superior and determined foe."

Four U.S. servicemen died in the ambush:

A fifth man, Army SFC Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shiprock, New Mexico, later died from his wounds.

On November 6, 2010, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James F. Amos, told reporters during a visit to Camp Pendleton, California that a living United States Marine had been nominated for the Medal of Honor.

Two days later, Marine Corps Times, an independent newspaper covering Marine Corps operations, reported that the unnamed person was Meyer, citing anonymous sources.

CNN confirmed the story independently two days later.

On June 9, 2011, the Marine Corps announced that two other Marines on Meyer's team in Ganjgal would receive the Navy Cross, the second-highest award for valor a Marine can receive.

Capt. Ademola D. Fabayo and Staff Sgt. Juan J. Rodriguez-Chavez were recognized for their roles in retrieving the bodies of the fallen Marines and Corpsman.

Before Meyer began searching for the missing servicemen on foot, Rodriguez-Chavez drove a gun truck into the kill zone with Fabayo manning the truck's machine gun.

When President Barack Obama's staff called Meyer to set up a time for the president to inform him that his case for the Medal of Honor had been approved, they were told Meyer was working at his construction job and were asked to call again during his lunch break.

Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor in a ceremony on September 15, 2011.

When a White House staffer contacted Meyer to arrange the ceremony, Meyer asked if he could have a beer with the president, and President Obama agreed to the request.

He received an invitation to the White House for the afternoon before the ceremony.

Meyer also requested that when he was honored, simultaneous commemorative services should be held at other associated locations to honor the memory of his colleagues who died or were mortally wounded during the ambush and his rescue attempts.

A year after the Battle of Ganjgal, after drinking at a friend's house, Meyer attempted to commit suicide using a Glock pistol kept in his truck's glove compartment.

The gun was not loaded.

Meyer later sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder.

In September 2011, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear bestowed upon Meyer the honorary title of Kentucky Colonel during an event in his hometown of Greensburg in which Meyer served as grand marshal.

Meyer filed a lawsuit against his former employer, defense contractor BAE Systems, alleging the company and his supervisor punished him for his opposition to a weapons sale to Pakistan.

The lawsuit claimed that BAE Systems ridiculed Meyer's Medal of Honor, called him mentally unstable and suggested he had a drinking problem, thereby costing him a job.

On December 15, 2011, BAE announced that the parties resolved their dispute out of court.

On December 14, 2011, McClatchy news outlets published an article which questioned the actual number of lives Meyer saved.

The article explained that accounts leading to Medal of Honor awards are frequently inaccurate, and that in Meyer's case "crucial parts that the Marine Corps publicized were untrue, unsubstantiated or exaggerated".

At the same time, the article emphasized that Meyer "by all accounts deserved his nomination."

Meyer and Bing West wrote the book Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War, about the Battle of Ganjgal.

It was published on September 25, 2012.

In the book, Meyer makes a case for Army Captain William D. Swenson to be awarded the Medal of Honor; Swenson had criticized Army officers at the nearby Forward Operating Base Joyce for not providing fire support, leading to accusations that the paperwork for his Medal of Honor recommendation had been "lost" as punishment.

Those same officers were later cited following a military investigation for "negligent" leadership leading "directly to the loss of life" on the battlefield.