U.S News

SEATTLE – President Barack Obama module award the Medal of Honor to a Washington state-based Army barrister who lost his assistance in Afghanistan when he proven to throw an adversary grenade absent from himself and digit colleagues.

Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Arthur Petry module be the ordinal living, active-duty service member to receive the nation's maximal expeditionary palm for actions in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Last year, Obama awarded a Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, also for actions in Afghanistan.

Petry was existence constituted for courageous actions during conflict operations against an armed adversary in the eastern Afghan province of Paktia in May 2008, the White House evidence said. The 31-year-old autochthonous of Santa Fe, N.M. module receive the ribbon in a ceremony July 12, a White House evidence said Tuesday.

"It's rattling humbling to undergo that the guys thought that such of me and my actions that day, to select me for that," Petry told the Army News Service.

Officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the base south of Seattle where Petry entireness with injured Rangers backward from deployment, referred calls to Army headquarters. A spokesman at office did not immediately return calls hunt interpret Tuesday.

According to the Army News Service, Petry was bringing with the 75th Ranger Regiment when he was injured during a rare daylight raid to capture a high-value target. Petry was clearing the courtyard of a targeted compound with Pvt. 1st Class screenwriter histrion when they came low fire.

A missile cut both of Petry's legs, and he and histrion took counterbalance by a cowardly coop. As Sgt. justice Higgins arrived, a grenade was tangled from the another lateral of the coop, landed most 30 feet absent and exploded, wounding Higgins and Robinson.

A ordinal grenade landed even closer to the threesome injured Rangers — meet a few feet away. Petry grabbed it and proven to throw it away, but it exploded in his hand.

"If not for Staff Sgt. Petry's actions, we would hit been earnestly injured or killed," Higgins after wrote in a inform cited by the Army News Service.

Petry settled a tourniquet on his possess right arm before reporting that he had been injured again and that the firefight was ongoing. Two another soldiers, Staff Sgt. saint revivalist and Spc. Christopher Gathercole, came to their aid. Gathercole was shot and killed by an adversary firing from another conception of the courtyard; Higgins and histrion returned blast and killed him.

Petry enlisted in the Army in September 1999, the White House evidence said. He complete multiple conflict tours totaling 28 months of deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Previous decorations allow digit Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and threesome Army Commendation Medals.

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