Will Swenson

Capt. Will Swenson, next Medal of Honor recipient, sends touching invitation to Gold Star families

By Dan Lamothe on October 3, 2013 Afghanistan, Ganjgal, Medal of Honor

Former Army Capt. Will Swenson will receive the Medal of Honor on Oct. 15, more than four years after he and other U.S. forces tried desperately to find and save three Marines and a Navy corpsman who were trapped under heavy fire in the infamous Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan. Those troops didn’t make it out of the Sept. 8, 2009, ambush alive, but Swenson has not forgotten them. He invited the families of Marine 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, Gunnery Sgt. Edwin Johnson, Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick and Navy Hospitalman 3rd Class James Layton to his White House ceremony, said…

Dakota Meyer’s interpreter, once scared in Afghanistan, now safe at U.S. Wal-Mart

By Dan Lamothe on September 20, 2013 Afghanistan, Ganjgal, Medal of Honor

In recent weeks, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer has forcefully advocated for the U.S. to allow his former Afghan interpreter into the U.S., saying the man feared for his life after getting death threats from the Taliban. Fayez, shown at right with Meyer, is now in the U.S. The Marine posted the photograph on Twitter on Friday, adding a note that showed relief. “Back together finally,” Meyer said. “Fazel is in America.” Fazel — known in a lot of previous media coverage as Hafez to protect his identify — was in the Ganjgal Valley in eastern Afghanistan on Sept.…

Gritty war-zone video emerges of Capt. Will Swenson, next Medal of Honor recipient

By Dan Lamothe on September 19, 2013 Afghanistan, Awards, Ganjgal

The White House announced on Monday that former Army Capt. Will Swenson will receive the Medal of Honor on Oct. 15, four years after he braved enemy fire repeatedly while leading U.S. forces through a horrific ambush that erupted in eastern Afghanistan. The Battle of Ganjgal on Sept. 8, 2009, is especially well known because Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer already received the nation’s top award for valor that day. Until tonight, however, few had seen a gritty war-zone video of Swenson on the battlefield during it. A sergeant in the Army National Guard recorded it while working that day on…

Dakota Meyer asks: Why can’t the U.S. bring my intrepreter home?

By Dan Lamothe on August 13, 2013 Afghanistan, Awards, Ganjgal, Medal of Honor

With a deadly firefight raging, five men hopped into a Humvee and rode toward a small mountainside village in Afghanistan looking for a four-man team of U.S. forces that had gone missing in combat. The possibility that all five men wouldn’t make it out of the village of Ganjgal, in Kunar province, was high. Already, multiple Afghan troops the Americans were training had been cut down by machine-gun fire in a fierce ambush that was launched about dawn on Sept. 8, 2009. U.S. Army officers at nearby Forward Operating Base Joyce had declined to send air support in a timely…

Media blitz for Dakota Meyer’s new book begins today

By Dan Lamothe on September 25, 2012 Afghanistan, Awards, Ganjgal, Medal of Honor

It has been more than a year since President Obama draped the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest valor award, around the neck of Dakota Meyer. Today, the Marine’s own account of the Sept. 8, 2009, ambush in Ganjgal, Afghanistan, that led to the award hits shelves in bookstores. “Into the Fire,” written with the help of author Bing West, recounts the botched mission in which he and several other U.S. service members risked life and limb in an attempt to recover the bodies of four fellow members of an embedded training team that had gone missing in a maelstrom…

Thoughts on the ’60 Minutes’ piece with Dakota Meyer

By Dan Lamothe on September 19, 2011 Afghanistan, Awards, Ganjgal, Washington

Last night, the messy background behind Sgt. Dakota Meyer’s Medal of Honor was reintroduced to the nation. In a 15-minute piece on “60 Minutes,” CBS reporter David Martin outlined what went wrong in the six-hour battle in Ganjgal, Afghanistan, that led to Meyer taking his life in his hands on Sept. 8, 2009, in an attempt to save as many Afghan and American forces as he could from the teeth of a well planned ambush. The clip is up here: [HTML1] Some of the details reported last night will be common knowledge to those who have tracked Ganjgal, but there…

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