The Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer reenlisted on Thursday, returning to duty 15 years after he received the nation’s highest honor for valor.
It immediately raises the question: why?
Meyer, now 36 years old, said in a statement he felt called to return to military service, this time to the Corp’s Reserve component. His decision, he explained, came after a question from a Marine during a speaking event about whether that Marine should reenlist for another tour or leave the Corps.
Meyer encouraged the Marine to remain in the service.
Reflecting on his response later on, Meyer asked himself, “How could I ask them to continue to serve and sacrifice without doing it myself?”
“You’ve got to be who you say you are and live by the standards you expect everybody else to live by,” Meyer said in a Marine Corps release on his return. “I had to look in the mirror and lay out who I wanted to be, then turn around and assess all my decisions and habits and decide if they were helping me get closer to who I needed to be.”
The Marine Corps published a video on social media Thursday morning before the reenlistment ceremony showing Meyer working out with other Marines, sporting the “high and tight” haircut Marines are well-known for.
“I would say that there has probably not been a day that I’ve been out that I haven’t wanted to come back in,” Meyer told reporters during a press briefing before the ceremony.
“I finally just got to a point where I felt like I would be an asset and I felt like I could come back in and contribute,” he said.
Meyer has served as an ambassador for the Marine Corps since leaving active duty and has traveled the country to speak with Marine units.
He has two children with his ex-wife, Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.
Speaking at the reenlistment ceremony Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he asked Meyer if he was sure. “He was. Dead sure,” the defense chief said.
Meyer became an outspoken critic of the Biden administration, particularly amid the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He knows Hegseth personally, along with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Hegseth previously served with the Army National Guard, leaving the service as a major. Gabbard is still in the reserve, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel.
“This is a guy who’s put it all on the line, done the most difficult things you can imagine, testing human resolve, and yet after all of that, he’s standing before us today saying ‘I want to do more,'” Hegseth said Thursday. “That’s an example.”
Meyer was the Corps’ first Marine in almost 40 years to receive the Medal of Honor.
He received the award in 2011, just two years after a brutal gunfight in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province which saw five US servicemembers killed. Meyer entered an ambush zone multiple times to rescue wounded troops, which the DoD estimated saved almost three dozen US and Afghan personnel.
Medals of Honor often become mired in bureaucratic red tape throughout the often complex and inefficient military awards process, leaving some recipients waiting even longer, sometimes seeing other valor awards upgraded years later.
The official story from the Marine Corps came under question after the 2011 award ceremony. A reporter who was embedded with Meyer’s unit during the gunfight said that while Meyer deserved the Medal of Honor, the Corps unnecessarily embellished some of the details to secure the award for a living recipient.
The Marine Corps challenged those claims in an official rebuttal statement, breaking down the investigation process concerning the details of what Meyer called the “worst day of his life.”
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