Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for trying to rescue a wounded soldier from intense small-arms and rocket-propelled-grenade fire in Gowardesh, Afghanistan. He was killed during the attack in June 2006.
Obama presented Monti’s family with the award in a ceremony at the White House in September 2009. “Jared Monti did something no amount of training can instill,” he said. “His patrol leader said he’d go, but Jared said: ‘No. He is my soldier; I am going to get him.'... Faced with overwhelming enemy fire, Jared could have stayed where he was, behind that wall. But that was not the kind of soldier Jared Monti was.”
Monti began his military career when he enlisted in the National Guard as a high school junior.
