By Associated Press
Pikeville, KY – A former Marine who will be presented with the Medal of Honor for braving enemy fire to find and retrieve the bodies of three missing Marines and a Navy corpsman deserves the award, according to the half-brother of one of the deceased men.
Chase Goodman of Pikeville, Ky., told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he hopes Dakota Meyer receives nationwide recognition when he is presented with the nation's highest military decoration for valor.
Goodman says he believes Meyer's actions to try to save the men in Afghanistan in 2009 were "just extraordinary" and called him a true hero.
Meyer, who is originally from Kentucky, left active duty last year and now lives in Austin, Texas. He will be the first living Marine in 41 years to receive the award.
He is receiving the award for retrieving the bodies of 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25; Marine Gunnery Sgt. Edwin Johnson, 31; Marine Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, 30; Navy Corpsman James Layton, 22; and an Afghan soldier they were training. Johnson was Goodman's half-brother.
"I think that at some point Dakota probably knew they were already dead," Goodman said Monday. "But the simple fact of his determination to rush in there and try to pull them out regardless ... it's just extraordinary. I'd really like for him to get some recognition for what he did."
Goodman said his family has heard recordings and read transcripts of radio transmissions from the fight in which the soldiers who were killed were pinned down and cut off for five hours.
"It seems to me, from the recordings we heard, that they basically just told these guys to fight on as long as they could, just sit there and take it," Goodman said.
"The last transcript I was able to see was my brother saying, `We're running low on ammo; if you don't help us we're going to die.' It still gets me choked up."
Meyer decided to try to save the men, but found them dead and retrieved their bodies.
Meyer, now 23, has tried to downplay his actions.
"At the end of the day, it's not about me," he told the Herald-Leader last year. "I'm absolutely the furthest thing from a hero. I'm just an ordinary guy who got put in extraordinary circumstances and just did my job."
Goodman said Meyer may be a "reluctant hero," but he deserves the award.
"If Dakota had not done what he did, we would not have had a body to bury," he said. "The insurgents would have taken the bodies away, because that's what they do to cause mental grief to loved ones back home."