Washington Post: Army Staff Sgt. Ty M. Carter, the latest recipient of the nation’s highest military honor, hopes to use the award to help others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which has afflicted him since a 2009 battle in eastern Afghanistan that cost eight fellow soldiers their lives.
President Obama awarded Carter the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony Monday, making the 33-year-old from Washington state the fifth living recipient of the decoration for heroic actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.
In bestowing the medal, Obama hailed not only Carter’s gallantry in combat but “his courage in the other battle he has fought” — speaking out about his ordeal with post-traumatic stress. Obama said it was “absolutely critical . . . to put an end to any stigma” that prevents troops from getting treatment for PTSD.
Carter, then a specialist, distinguished himself when more than 300 Afghan insurgents launched a coordinated attack at dawn on Oct. 3, 2009, in an effort to overrun Combat Outpost Keating, a vulnerable position surrounded by peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains in the remote Kamdesh District of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province. Of the 53 fellow 4th Infantry Division soldiers who defended the outpost that day, eight were killed and more than 25 injured, according to the Army.
Carter, who was wounded in the fighting, became the second survivor of that battle to receive the Medal of Honor. In February, Obama awarded the medal to former Staff Sgt. Clinton L. Romesha for actions in another part of the outpost. It was the first battle to produce two living Medal of Honor recipients since the 1967 Battle of Ap Bac during the Vietnam War.
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