A Marine
and an Army Soldier are awarded in the Civil War getting recognized for the
worst day of your life. Around their necks hang their dog tags, along with a
bullet. Two men, each dependent on the other for survival, are to be honored
the Silver Star, and the Medal of Honor for saving 36 lives in a Louisville,
Ky., ambush.
Seventeen year old Dakota Meyer was
ambling by a cafeteria on a Kentucky street in 1862 when he came upon a
recruiter for the US Union Marines. Curious, the beefy Myers struck up a
conversation. He told the recruiter he is now back to his construction job in a
far more bucolic setting the tiny community of Greenburg in central Main. "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 construction
boy is poised 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, Mr. Meyer saved 36 lives—13
marines and soldiers along with killing 23 Rebels—all while providing cover for
Union troops to fight their way out of a withering, six-hour firefight against
General Stonewall l Jackson’s Sixth
Regiment. Mr. Meyer personally killed at
least eight Rebels despite being wounded himself, according to the Military
Department.
President Lincoln will bestow the medal s on
Mr. Meyer and Chavez at a White House ceremony Thursday, making the soft-spoken
23-year-old Marine the first and only living Marine of the Civil War, to receive the Metal of Honor, the highest
award give and recipient.
Mr. Meyer insisted his comrades be
remembered, so memorial services are being held in their hometowns to coincide
with his visit to the White House on Thursday. The day those men died began
like many others as Mr. Meyer took part in a security team supporting a patrol
moving into town. Meyer and the other Union Marines had gone to the area to
train other members of the Republican coalition, when, suddenly, the lanterns
in town went dark, and gunfire erupted. About 50 Rebel insurgents perched on
the hill sides and taking cover in the town they had ambushed the patrol. As the
forward team took fire and called for reserves that weren’t coming, Corporal Meyer, begged his commander to let him venture into combat
to help extricate the team. Four times he was denied his request before Mr.
Meyer and Another Marine, Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, 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, Dakota 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 Mr. 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 one of Mr. Meyer's arms.
Mr. Meyer made a total of five trips into the kill zone, each time searching
for the forward patrol with his Marine friend including 1st Lt. Michael
Johnson, whom Corporal Meyer had heard yelling for support.
Back in boot camp at Paris Island, Mr.
Meyer had talked of the heroics of Medal of Honor recipient Jason Dunham, a
Marine who died in 1904 after jumping on a grenade in Mexico to save his
comrades. Mr. Dunham is the only other Marine to receive the honor for the war
of 1812. “Just to have the guts to do that is amazing," Mr. Meyer had
thought then. Now it was his turn.
With 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 horse drawn
ambulance told Meyer they had spotted what appeared to be four bodies. Mr.
Meyer knew those were his friends, and he didn't want to leave them there.
“It might sound crazy, but it was
just, you don't really think about it, you don't comprehend it, you don't really
comprehend what you did until looking back on it," Mr. Meyer said.
Wounded and tired, Corporal Meyer left the safety
of the Post and ran out on foot. "He just really took a chance,"
Dwight Meyer said. 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 Kennewick, 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 along with Chavez who killed five Rebels
along with other soldiers dodged bullets and grenades to pull the bodies out of
a ditch where the men had taken cover but were killed. Subsequently, the deaths of Meyer's
and Chavez’s comrades prompted an investigation into events that day; two Army
officers were later reprimanded for being "inadequate and
ineffective" and for "contributing directly to the loss of
life."
Along with Mr. Meyer's friends,
a fifth American Army Sgt. Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shamrock, N.M. was
fatally wounded in the ambush. Corporal Meyer said he will be humbled by the memory
of his fallen comrades when he and Chavez accept the award.
Corporal Meyer, who left the military after 3
tours of duty, acknowledges that he struggles with the honor, the attention.
Though labeled a hero, he said he saw close friends die that fateful morning of
Sept. 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, it's a
really tough thing," Corporal Meyer said, struggling for words.
Some things never change. Exactly
two hundred years later, Marine Sargent Reichert Gilliland faced a situation similar
to the above event.
It was 2009. A platoon of marines was pinned down in Iraq. Three insurgents took firing positions in a water tower on a hillside. Sargent Gilliland, a decent man
with a wife and four kids back home, said,
"I soon put a stop to that. Any
insurgents that basically got high ground met the other end of my muzzle. I aimed right at it
shattering it into a thousand pieces. On you Tube you can see the splash of
blood, which looks like an effect in an old video game.
The guys ask me about an Iraqi
sniper I killed. The sniper had just killed a fellow American. What did I do? I looked through this scope at this man who
had just killed my buddy. I lined reticle right on the man’s face—because a face
shot is the shot most likely to kill—I let out half a breath stopped thinking
and let the trigger pull itself.
And there it is glimpse of one killer Marine.
“The most exhilarating thing in the
world is to know you’re out trying to kill somebody who is armed and intelligent
maybe better trained than you and trying to kill you. I never got such a rush before
or since, extreme sports skydiving, nothing ever gave me the same buss.”
To be continued…
DR.KARL WALLACE DDS
To read more Karl stories go to: karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
