President Barack Obama will present the Medal of Honor to former Army Sgt. Kyle White during a ceremony at The White House today for heroic actions during a 2007 firefight with enemy forces in Afghanistan. The ceremony will be broadcast live at 3:00 pm EST. Watch the live stream here: dvidshub.net/webcast/4235#.U3I1G61dUQ4 White, then a specialist with 2D Battalion (Airborne) 503D Infantry The Rock, 173rd Airborne Brigade, was a platoon radio telephone operator and among 14 American troops and Afghan soldiers ambushed while on patrol on November 8, 2007, in eastern Afghanistan. He quickly returned insurgent fire and was knocked unconscious by a rocket-propelled grenade as he tried to reload his weapon. When he came to, his face was hit with shrapnel. White and four others were cut off from the other soldiers, who jumped from a cliff. He applied first aid to a wounded soldier and they both moved to the only cover they had: a single tree on the mountain. When the shooting stopped and night fell, White, who was barely 20 years old, cared for his wounded brother, called in steady radio reports, directed security and guided in close-air support until the medevac birds were able to come and evacuate the wounded and the dead. “Finally, our story can be told,” he said. “These guys were the best of us. To me, it’s important that their names are known. This is only one story, and this was more than six years ago. Since then, hundreds more sacrifices and hundreds other stories are out there.”
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 15:09:15 +0000
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