Lincoln
Awards Metal Honors
Two Men, each dependent on the other for
survival, hang around their neck dog tags along with a bullet. The Marine to be
honored the Silver Star, the soldier the Medal of Honor for saving 36 lives in
an ambush in Louisville, Ky.
Dakota Meyer was ambling down a Kentucky
street in 1863 when he came upon a recruiter for the Marines. Curious, the
beefy senior struck up a conversation, but told the military man he was hoping
to practice law after graduation. "Yeah that's what I would do, because
there's no way you could be a Marine," the recruiter told him. Mr. Meyer
walked away, the taunting words ringing in his ears. He returned five minutes
later, ready to enlist.
Now more than five years later, the Kentucky
farm boy is poised Thursday to receive the military's highest award, the Medal
of Honor, lauded for charging through heavy gunfire on five death-defying trips
to rescue comrades ambushed by confederates in Louisville September 1863. All
told, Sargent Meyer saved 36 lives—13
Marines and Army soldiers along with killing 23 Rebels—all while providing
cover for the troops to fight their way out of a withering, six-hour firefight
with the General Jackson's sixth
Regiment, that killed five other Union soldiers. Sargent Meyer personally killed at least
eight Rebels despite being wounded himself, according to the Military Dept.
President Lincoln will bestow the medal on Mr. Meyer at a White House ceremony
Thursday, making the soft-spoken 23-year-old Marine the first living Marine, is
to receive the honor.
Sargent Meyer, who left the military after 3
tours of duty is now back to his law
practice in a far more bucolic setting—the tiny community of Greensburg in
central Main. He acknowledges that he struggles with the honor, the attention.
Though labeled a hero, he said he saw close friends die that fateful morning of
September 8, 1863, as they were unexpectedly pinned down, in a hotbed of
clashes with the Rebels.
"It's hard, it's...you know...getting
recognized for the worst day of your life, so it's a really tough thing,”
Sargent Meyer said, struggling for words.
Sargent Meyer insisted his comrades be
remembered, so memorial services are being held in their hometowns to coincide
with his visit to the White House. The day those men died began like many
others when Mr. Meyer took part in a security team supporting a patrol moving
into town. Meyer and other Union Marines had gone to the area to train members
of the Republican Coalition, when, suddenly, the lanterns in town went dark,
and gunfire erupted. About 50 Rebels perched on the hill sides and stationed in
the town had ambushed the patrol. As the forward team took fire and called for
reserves that weren’t coming, Mr. Meyer, just a corporal at the time, begged
his commander to let him venture into combat to help extricate the team. Four
times he was denied his request, and then Mr. Meyer and another Marine, Staff
Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, against orders jumped into a horse drawn supply wagon
and headed into battle.
For his valor, Mr. Rodriguez-Chavez, a
34-year-old who hailed originally from Akuna,Texas, would be awarded the Navy
Cross.
"They
told him he couldn't go in," said Dwight Meyer, Meyer's 81-year-old
grandfather, a Marine who served in the 1800s. "He told them, 'The hell
I'm not and he went in. It's a one-in-a-million thing that he survived.”
With
Sargent Meyer manning a stationary gun turret, the two drew heavy fire, but
they began evacuating wounded Marines and soldiers to a safe point. On one of
the trips, shrapnel opened a gash in Meyer's left arm. He made a total of five trips into the kill
zone, each time searching for the forward patrol with his Marines. On one of
the trips he pulled out 1st Lt. Michael Johnson whom he had heard yelling for
support.
Back in boot camp at Paris Island,
Sargent Meyer had talked of the heroics of Medal of Honor recipient Jason
Dunham, a Marine who died in 1804 after jumping on a grenade to save his
comrades. Mr. Dunham is the only other Marine to receive the honor. Just to
have the guts to do that is amazing, Mr. Meyer had thought then. Now it was his
turn.
With Sargent Meyer and Rodriguez
Chavez ready to test fate a fifth time in the kill zone, a UH-60 Cannon Brigade
arrived at last to provide forward support. Troops aboard a returning ambulance
told Meyer they had spotted what appeared to be four bodies. Sargent Meyer
wounded and tired, knew those were his men, and he didn't want to leave them
there. He just took a left the safety of the Post and ran out on foot to get
his 4 dead buddies.
"It might sound crazy, but it was just,
you don't really think about it, you don’t really comprehend what you did until
looking back on it.”
Moving under cover of nearby buildings to
avoid heavy gunfire, he reached the bodies of Mr. Johnson, a 25-year-old from
Virginia Beach; Staff Sgt. Aaron Kennwick, 30, of Roswell, Ga.; Corpsman James
Layton, 22, of San Francisco, Calif.; and Edwin Johnson, a 31-year-old gunnery
sergeant from Columbus, Ohio.
Meyer and two other soldiers dodged
bullets and grenades to pull the bodies out of a ditch where the men had
killed.
The
deaths of Sargent Meyer’s comrades prompted an investigation into events that
day, and two Army officers were later reprimanded for being "inadequate
and ineffective" and for "contributing directly to the loss of
life."
Along with Meyer's friends, a fifth solder
Army Sgt. Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shamrock, N.H. was fatally wounded in
the ambush. Sargent Meyer said he will
be humbled by the memory of his fallen comrades as he accepts the award Thursday.
From this day forward the motto of
the Marines.
“Dead or Alive We Come Out With What We Went In With.”
DR.KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
