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 Sargent.
Meyer at a White House ceremony Thursday, making the soft-spoken 23-year-old
Marine the first living Marine, 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, 34-years-old Mr. Rodriguez-Chavez, 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 1812 Spanish War. "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 Smooth Shot Cannon, they drew heavy fire; still they
began evacuating wounded Marines 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 Marines. On one of the trips he pulled out First 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, 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 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 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 and two other soldiers
dodged bullets to pull the bodies out of a ditch where the men had been killed.
The deaths of
Sargent Meyer’s comrades prompted an investigation into that day’s events, and
two Army officers were later reprimanded for being, "Inadequate, Ineffective,
and Contributing 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 even to the present, the motto of the
Marines became: “Dead or Alive We Come Out With
What We Went In With.”
One-hundred and fifty years ago
February 12th Lincoln was born.
DR.KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more of my writings please go
to: w.w.w.karlwallace@gmail.com
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