Medal of Honor Monday: Army Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha

View Online Medal of Honor Monday: Army Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha Oct. 14, 2024 | By Katie Lange When Army Staff Sgt. Clinton Lavor Romesha woke up on a remote outpost in Afghanistan in 2009, he likely didn't realize he would spend the rest of the day fighting for his life. But as an overwhelming number of Taliban insurgents tried to take over the small encampment, Romesha refused to give up, battling through injury to save as many men as he could. His heroic efforts led to his receiving the Medal of Honor.   Romesha was born on Aug. 17, 1981, in tiny Lake City in northwestern California to parents Gary Romesha and Martishia Rogers. He has an older sister and a younger brother. He has two older brothers who also served in the military. Romesha is a third-generation veteran. His father served in Vietnam, and his grandfather, who he spent a lot of time with growing up, served during World War II. Both men's service inspired Romesha to want to join the military, too; however, he also considered following in his father's footsteps as a local leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romesha said he attended seminary in the mornings before high school and wanted to do mission work for the church. But missionaries were required to be 21, so he signed up for the military instead. After graduating from Surprise Valley High School in nearby Cedarville, California, in 1999, a 17-year-old Romesha asked his dad to sign his paperwork to join the Army. But his dad was skeptical, so he had to wait until the day after his 18th birthday to officially enlist.   Romesha was trained as an M1 armor crewman. Shortly after finishing basic training, he married his high school girlfriend, Tammy. Romesha first served as a tank gunner in Germany and deployed to Kosovo while there. His next stint was in Korea before doing his first combat tour in Iraq in 2004. When he returned, Romesha said he was reclassified from an armor crewman to a cavalry scout and was placed with the 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado. While there, he completed reconnaissance and air assault training, as well as an advanced leadership course. Romesha did another tour of Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009. He and his unit were sent to Combat Outpost Keating, one of the most austere and vulnerable outposts in the country. Near the Pakistani border, Keating was small and sat at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains, which — investigators learned later — was ideal for insurgents to lay low until they were ready to attack. The base was later determined to be "tactically indefensible." Romesha said he and his fellow soldiers knew it was a bad place to be. "We made the best of a really crappy situation," he said in a 2014 Library of Congress Veterans History Project interview.   Around 6 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2009, Romesha was serving as the section leader of Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron and was still asleep when Keating was attacked by about 300 Taliban fighters. The insurgents occupied the high ground on all four sides of the small complex and launched rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft machine guns, mortars and other debilitating fire at the awakening troops — about 53 men in total. "As soon as you heard those rounds come in — we'd gotten attacked on a pretty regular basis, and you kind of got used to incoming normally around that time in the morning — but this time you just knew it was a whole different ballgame," Romesha explained, saying the insurgents were well trained and singularly focused. Romesha quickly moved with no cover through the intense fire to do some recon and get a machine gun from the barracks. He grabbed an assistant gunner, Army Spc. Justin Gregory, and the pair dove into the fight. Romesha took cover behind a generator and took out an enemy machine gun team. He set his sights on taking another out when the generator was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, embedding shrapnel into his hip, arm and neck. Romesha kept fighting. When another soldier turned up to help, he rushed back through the barrage to the barracks to gather up more soldiers.   When he learned that Taliban fighters had breached the outpost's perimeter and were within the wire, Romesha grabbed a sniper rifle and mobilized a five-man team to head back into the fight to retake the camp. He continually exposed himself to enemy fire and moved confidently through the outpost, destroying enemy targets and taking out three enemy fighters who had made it inside the wire. When Romesha got to the tactical operations center, he let them know the enemy had, in fact, breached the perimeter. But he was determined to take the post back. Romesha orchestrated a plan to secure and reinforce key points of the outpost, including recapturing the ammunition supply post and the entry control point to keep more enemy fighters from getting inside. After those two points were secured, the enemy attacked with even greater ferocity. But Romesha had finally identified a village and a nearby checkpoint as where the attack was originating from, so he used radio communications to call in air support to destroy those areas. The counterattack took out more than 30 enemy fighters and was vital to allowing his men to hold the entry control point. Soon after, Romesha began receiving reports that seriously injured soldiers were trapped at another position, so he and his team provided cover fire that allowed three of those trapped soldiers to escape and safely reach the aid station. The team then pushed through overwhelming fire — despite a lack of cover — to recover the bodies of two soldiers, Sgt. Justin T. Gallegos and Sgt. Vernon W. Martin, before they could be taken by insurgents.   Throughout the 12-hour ordeal, Romesha's actions were critical in suppressing an enemy that vastly outnumbered them. The Army said he was personally responsible for taking out 10 enemy fighters with small-arms fire, as well as calling in the close-air support that took out 30 more. By the end of the fight, which was later dubbed the Battle of Kamdesh, eight men had died: Gallegos, Martin, Pfc. Kevin Thomson, Sgt. Michael Scusa, Sgt. Joshua Kirk, Sgt. Christopher Griffin, Sgt. Joshua Hardt and Spc. Stephan Mace. But thanks to Romesha, his unit was able to regroup and counterattack long enough to resecure the outpost.   Romesha came home from that deployment and separated from the Army in April 2011. About two years later, he learned he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions at Keating. According to the White House, he responded by downplaying his actions and instead lauded the rest of the team with him that day. With his family by his side, Romesha received the nation's highest honor from President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony on Feb. 11, 2013. "Throughout history, the question has often been asked, why? Why do those in uniform take such extraordinary risks? And what compels them to such courage?" Obama said during the ceremony. "You ask Clint and any of these soldiers who are here today, and they'll tell you. Yes, they fight for their country, and they fight for our freedom. Yes, they fight to come home to their families. But most of all, they fight for each other, to keep each other safe and to have each other's backs." A second Medal of Honor for actions taken during the Battle of Kamdesh was later bestowed upon Army Staff Sgt. Ty Carter, who also survived the ordeal. Romesha and his wife eventually settled in Minot, North Dakota, where he works in the oil industry. They have three children. Romesha's eventually wrote his story down and published it in 2016 in a book called, "Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor." He was also featured in the Netflix documentary series "Medal of Honor." In the years since the Battle of Kamdesh, Romesha has attended conferences and events as a guest speaker to share his experiences — something he says veterans owe to their countrymen and women. In 2019, Romesha spoke to the Minot Daily News in North Dakota about what it means to wear the Medal of Honor. "It's not mine," he said. "It not only represents those eight guys that gave up more than was ever required of them, but it represents every American, all of our service men and women — past, present and future. The ones that sacrificed, the ones that are currently sacrificing and, unfortunately, the ones that are going to have to do it in the future to sacrifice. That's what I wear it for now. That's why I carry it with me."  This article is part of a weekly series called "Medal of Honor Monday," in which we highlight one of the more than 3,500 Medal of Honor recipients who have received the U.S. military's highest medal for valor. More Stories of Valor   Experience: The Highest Awards for Valor

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