Why a marine medal of honor has rearned after more than a decade

The recipient of the Marine Corps medal of honor, Dakota Meyer, re -enlisted Thursday, returning to the service 15 years after having received the highest distinction of the country for the value.

This immediately raises the question: why?

Meyer, now 36, said in a statement that he felt called to return to military service, this time in the corp reserve component. His decision, he explained, came after a question of a navy at a speaking event to know if this navy should be re-enlisted for another tour or leave the body.

Meyer encouraged the navy to stay in service.

By thinking about his answer later, Meyer wondered: “How could I ask them to continue serving and sacrificed themselves without doing it myself?”

“You must be who you say that you are and live according to the standards you expect from everyone,” said Meyer in a liberation from the navy on his return. “I had to look in the mirror and determine who I wanted to be, then turn around and assess all of my decisions and habits and decide if they helped me get closer to who I should be.”

The Marine Corps published a video on social networks Thursday morning before the re -enrollment ceremony showing Meyer working with other marines, sporting the haircuts “high and tight” that the Marines are well known.

“I would say that there was probably not a day when I came out that I did not want to come back,” said Meyer to journalists during a press briefing before the ceremony.

“I finally just got to a point where I felt like I would be an asset and I felt like I could come back and contribute,” he said.

Meyer has been Ambassador of the Marine Corps since his active departure and has traveled the country to speak with marine units.

He has two children with his ex-wife, Bristol Palin, daughter of the former governor of Alaska and nominated at the Republican vice-president of 2008, Sarah Palin.

Speaking Thursday during the re -enrollment ceremony, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that he had asked Meyer if he was sure. “He was sure,” said the defense chief.

Meyer has become a frank critic of the Biden administration, in particular in the midst of the disastrous withdrawal from the United States of Afghanistan. He personally knows Hegseth, with the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Hegseth previously served in the National Army Guard, leaving service as an adult. Gabbard is still in the reserve, holding the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

“He is a guy who put everything into play, does the most difficult things you can imagine, testing human resolution, and yet after all this, he is in front of us today saying” I want to do more “,” said Hegseth on Thursday. “This is an example.”

Meyer was the first marine in the body in almost 40 years to receive the medal of honor.

He received the prize in 2011, only two years after a brutal shooting in the province of Kunar in Afghanistan who saw five American soldiers killed. Meyer has repeatedly entered an ambush area to save injured troops, which estimated that the DOD has saved nearly three dozen members of American and Afghan staff.

The medals of honor often become embellished in bureaucratic administrative formalities throughout the process of presenting military awards often complex and ineffective, leaving certain beneficiaries to wait even longer, sometimes seeing other rewards of improved value of years later.

The official story of the Marine Corps is questioned after the award ceremony in 2011. A journalist who was anchored with the Meyer unit during the shooting said that even if Meyer deserved the medal of honor, the body unnecessarily embellished some of the details to guarantee the price for a living recipient.

The Marine Corps challenged these affirmations in an official refutation declaration, decomposing the investigation process concerning the details of what Meyer called the “worst day of his life”.