THE STORY OF DAKOTA MEYER

On September 8, 2009, Marine ETT 2-8 was gathering intelligence from talks with locals in a village in an Afghan ravine.

Cpl. Dakota Meyer and SSgt Rodriguez-Chavez had been ordered to wait with the vehicles at the mouth of the ravine. Meanwhile, some 150 well-equipped insurgents were preparing to encircle and attack the force in the village, which sat in an exposed position.

When the firefight started, Meyer listened on the radio as the fighting grew heavier and the calls for fire support came to nothing. The JTACs did everything they could, but nothing they asked for was cleared. With enemy pressure rising, the men called for smoke and tried to pull back. The smoke arrived a full hour after the request and landed so badly that they could move only a few meters.

An Army platoon was nearby and was asked to step in, but the platoon leader decided against it. Meyer was told several times not to intervene. He and Rodriguez decided to drive into the ravine anyway and get to their comrades. Meyer manned the Humvee’s .50 cal and Rodriguez drove.

In the ravine the vehicle came under fire immediately. Meyer fired more than 2,000 rounds, and when his gun failed he picked up the RPK of a dead fighter. He is said to have killed eight insurgents in all, one of them with his M4 as the man tried to climb into the vehicle.
Once they reached the village, they immediately began evacuating their own men, driving out of the village and back in several times. They were under fire the whole time, and Rodriguez ran over an insurgent in the road.
When Meyer went looking for his comrades on foot, a Taliban fighter caught him by surprise. In the struggle that followed, Meyer crushed the man’s skull with a rock. At his team’s last known position he found all four comrades dead: the medic still with his medical kit in his hand, trying to save them; the JTAC with a map, calling for the fire support they had hoped for.

For his courage that day, Dakota Meyer received the Medal of Honor.

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