SEAL Who Wrestled Gunman and Shielded Hostage Is Awarded Medal of Honor
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/us/politics/seal-team-6-member-is-awarded-medal-of-honor-by-obama.html?_r=1By MARK MAZZETTI and GARDINER HARRISFEB. 29, 2016
U.S. & Politics By REUTERS 00:25
Medal of Honor for SEAL Member
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Medal of Honor for SEAL Member
WASHINGTON — Edward C. Byers Jr., a senior chief special warfare operator, was the second Navy SEAL team member to enter a Taliban compound on a frigid night in December 2012, part of a mission to rescue an American doctor being held hostage in eastern Afghanistan. The first, Petty Officer First Class Nicolas Checque, was shot in the head after he burst through the door.
In the frantic minutes that followed, Chief Byers, 36, wrestled with a Taliban gunman inside the room and dived on top of Dr. Dilip Joseph — the American hostage — to protect him from gunfire, according to an official military account of the raid. When the operation was over, all the Taliban fighters lay dead and Dr. Joseph was spirited to safety by helicopter.
In a White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama awarded Chief Byers the Medal of Honor for his actions that night, the first member of SEAL Team 6 — the elite, classified special operations unit made famous for killing Osama bin Laden — to receive the military’s most prestigious combat medal.
“Today’s ceremony is truly unique,” Mr. Obama said during the ceremony in the packed East Room of the White House. “It’s a rare opportunity for the American people to get a glimpse of a special breed of warrior that so often serves in the shadows.”
Once called upon only rarely to carry out highly specialized missions, SEAL Team 6 has performed thousands of combat operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in countries where the United States does not acknowledge it is at war.
The unit generally considers hostage rescue missions its most important and riskiest assignments, since the hostage is in peril from the moment the raid begins.
Dr. Joseph was working for a nonprofit group based in Colorado that was building medical clinics in Afghanistan when he was captured in early December 2012. The operation to rescue him came days later, on Dec. 8, when the SEALs landed in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan and hiked for hours before reaching the small compound where he was held.
Mr. Obama said Monday that a Taliban sentry spotted the team when it was about 100 feet from the compound, and that the deadly battle began shortly afterward. According to Dr. Joseph’s memoir, the barking of a dog and the bleating of two sheep gave warning to the Taliban fighters in the minutes before the team came into the compound.
Petty Officer Checque, the point man on the raid, was gunned down by AK-47 fire immediately after he entered the room where Dr. Joseph was sleeping.
Chief Byers followed his teammate into the room and fought with a Taliban gunman who had been aiming an AK-47 at him. He then dived on Dr. Joseph to protect him, according to the official citation given with the medal.
“While covering the hostage with his body, Chief Byers immobilized another guard with his bare hands and restrained the guard until a teammate could” kill him, the citation said.
Dr. Joseph has praised his rescuers, speaking of their bravery and the swiftness of the raid. But he has also been troubled by what he saw that night, and his account of what transpired differs from the official military version in one important aspect.
In interviews with The New York Times, Dr. Joseph raised the possibility that the team may have killed a Taliban prisoner whom it had taken into custody. He said that the man, a 19-year old named Wallakah, had been subdued and disarmed by the SEALs at the beginning of the raid, but that as Dr. Joseph was escorted to a military helicopter he saw Wallakah lying in a pool of blood, dead.
Military officials have denied this account, saying that all of the Taliban gunmen were killed immediately after the SEALs entered the compound and that the Americans never took Wallakah into custody.
As the Americans flew back to back to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan after the mission, Chief Byers and others tried to revive Petty Officer Checque, but he was pronounced dead when they reached the base.
In a brief news conference after the ceremony, Chief Byers paid homage to Petty Officer Checque and the others on the mission. Even after receiving the military’s highest honor, he said, he plans to remain in the military and “continue doing my job in the Navy.”
