Sgt, USMC — War on Terror
Dakota Louis Meyer was born on June 26, 1988, in Columbia, Kentucky, a small town in the state’s rural south-central region. He graduated from Green County High School in 2006, where he played on the football team, and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps that same year, completing basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. He trained as a scout sniper and deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, in 2007 with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines. He then volunteered for a second deployment, this time to Afghanistan, where he served with Embedded Training Team 2-8, advising Afghan National Army and Border Police forces in Kunar Province.
On September 8, 2009, near the village of Ganjgal in Kunar Province, a patrol of Afghan forces and their American advisers was ambushed at dawn by more than fifty insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and machine guns from houses and fortified hillsides. Hearing over the radio that four American team members were cut off, then-Corporal Meyer requested permission to enter the kill zone four times and was denied each time. He went anyway. With Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez-Chavez driving, Meyer took the exposed gunner’s position in an armored Humvee and charged down the terraced terrain. Over the next six hours he made five trips into the ambush area — killing eight insurgents, personally evacuating twelve wounded, and providing cover for two dozen more Afghan and American troops to escape. Despite a shrapnel wound to his arm, he dismounted on the final trip and moved on foot to locate his four missing friends, finding them dead and, with Afghan soldiers, recovering their bodies under fire.
On September 15, 2011, at age twenty-three, Meyer received the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama, becoming the first living Marine to receive the award in thirty-eight years. He dedicated the medal to the four fallen Americans whose bodies he had recovered. After leaving active duty in 2010, he became a veterans advocate, and in 2025 he returned to service in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Sources: Wikipedia · Congressional Medal of Honor Society