President Obama will present the medal of honor to former army Captain Floren Groberg.
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He was born in France and became a naturalized USA citizen in 2001.
Captain Groberg will be the tenth living recipient to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan.
“The only thing I could think of was, ‘I have to get him away”. Seven more were posthumously awarded the medal. Of those 10, three including Groberg are from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.
A second suicide bomber set off his vest almost simultaneously, killing five people, the Army News Service said. “That’s the nature of courage”, Obama said at a ceremony for Groberg. He thought he had stepped on an improvised explosive device. “It felt like a blow torch was burning through my leg”, he said in the interview. Groberg, who suffered severe injuries to his left leg and a brain injury in the 2012 attack, was medically retired from the Army in June. From this day on, starting tomorrow, from that day on, I will always be living my life for them and try to be a better person.
Groberg and five other soldiers were providing a security detail for senior US military leaders as they were heading down a street toward the provincial governor’s compound when an ambush started to unfold, according to a story about the incident on the U.S. Army’s official homepage.
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He told the Washington Post that he would have preferred to receive the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for heroism, because of its lower profile.
