Medal of Honor Monday: Edward Byers, Jr.

On this day in 1979, a hero is born. Edward C. Byers would go on to become a corpsman, then a Navy SEAL—and, finally, a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

He sees the Medal as a duty and a responsibility.

“It’s not necessarily anything I welcome, but it’s part of my job now,” he told the Navy Times. “This isn’t something we ask for, this is something that is bestowed upon you. And with it comes some obligations.”

Byers’s heroism had come in Afghanistan when he volunteered to participate in a 2012 hostage rescue mission. That mission was so dangerous that only volunteers would be asked to go.

Naturally, then-Chief Byers went. American doctor Dilip Joseph was in dire danger if someone didn’t come for him.

An undated Navy photo depicts Byers. His uniform insignia have been digitally removed for security reasons.

Our men were inserted into the area by helicopters, but it was still a treacherous multi-hour walk to the place where Dr. Joseph was being held. Indeed, our SEALs had just arrived when one of the enemy spotted the rescue force.

They shot him and turned toward the compound, but “shots fired” meant that the rescue force was under pressure to move fast.

The SEAL’s point man, Nicolas Checque, was the first one through the door, with Byers close on his heels.

“We encountered something we had never encountered before . . . It was wool blankets that were multi-layered and cemented into the door frame on opposing sides,” Byers later described. The blankets created a sort of maze and turned out to be hard to deal with, especially since they kept getting caught on his gear.

Byers would later say that “seconds were hours in this environment.” He emerged soon after Checque, only to find “an enemy guard aiming an AK- 47 at him,” as his citation notes. Byers took care of that threat and was soon facing another.

“Then I saw another person was moving across the floor, toward the area where there were some weapons,” he described. He lunged at the moving man, pinning him down. He struggled with his night vision goggles, trying to determine who was underneath him.

“This entire time, this person is grabbing, trying to reach for these weapons and grab something,” Byers explained.  Was it a scared hostage trying to defend himself? Or the enemy? He didn’t know until a small voice began calling: “I’m over here; I’m over here.”

“It was not the person I was on top of . . . and so I made the decision to shoot the person that I was on top of,” Byers concluded.  He would speak of how many decisions he had to make in a matter of seconds.

Now he turned toward Dr. Joseph’s location.

“The first thought in your mind is, I have to protect this person,” he remembered. “And since we wear body armor, it just made sense to immediately get on top of him . . . .”

Another enemy was already lunging toward the weapon stash, but “by the grace of God,” Byers later said, the enemy was within arm’s reach.

He reached out, grabbing the enemy by the throat and pinning him against the wall until another SEAL was able to take care of the threat. “Anyone who’s been in combat knows that in those moments, you either react or you get killed,” he explained.

Soon all of the enemy were eliminated, and the SEALs were able to walk the doctor out. As a former corpsman, Byers was already working on Checque, who’d been shot coming through the door, but it was too late.

“Our mission was to bring back the American hostage alive, and we did that. In doing so, Nic Checque laid down his life for another fellow American,” Byers said. He thought Checque should have gotten the Medal.

 “The award was truly his,” Byers concluded. “He was an American hero. He died a warrior, and he died to bring back another American. I believe our nation owes him a debt of gratitude.”

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 Primary Sources:

• Medal of Honor citation (Edward C. Byers, Jr.; War on Terrorism)

• MEDAL OF HONOR: Navy SEAL Hostage Rescue and Hand-to-Hand Combat with Taliban: Edward Byers (American Veterans Center)

• Meghann Myers, Navy SEAL recounts daring rescue mission that led to Medal of Honor (Navy Times; Feb. 28, 2016)

• Navy SEAL Edward Byers Breaks Secrecy, Receives Medal of Honor (NBC News; Feb. 29, 2016)