WASHINGTON — In the darkness of a single-room building in Afghanistan, Navy Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward C. Byers Jr. had little time to react: A fellow Navy SEAL had just been shot in the head during a hostage rescue mission, and it wasn’t clear who else in the room wanted to kill the American team.
Byers burst in anyway, shooting a Taliban fighter who had an automatic rifle aimed at him. Another man scrambled to the corner of the room, where another rifle was stored, so Byers tackled him, then tried to adjust his night-vision goggles to see whether he was the American hostage.
The hostage, lying 5 feet away, called out in English, so Byers killed the insurgent he was straddling and hurled himself on top of the hostage to protect him from gunfire. At the same time, Byers pinned another enemy fighter to the wall with a hand to the throat until another SEAL shot the militant.
Byers, 36, received the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony Monday for his actions Dec. 8, 2012. In doing so, he stepped out of the shadows and in front of news cameras for the nation’s highest award for valor in combat.
President Barack Obama said during the ceremony that Byers is the “consummate, quiet professional” who would rather be elsewhere, perhaps holding his breath under dark, frigid water.
“Whenever Americans are taken hostage in the world, we move heaven and earth to bring them home safe,” Obama said. “We send some thunder and some lightning.”
Byers is thought to be the first living service member to receive the Medal of Honor for actions while serving in the highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command. Defense officials declined to confirm that but said Byers is the first living SEAL to receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.
JSOC, created in 1980, includes the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, better known as SEAL Team 6, the Army’s Delta Force and other elite units. U.S. officials previously have acknowledged that the 2012 raid was carried out by SEAL Team 6. The unit is best known for undertaking the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.
“Today’s ceremony is truly unique, a rare opportunity for the American people to get a glimpse of a special breed of warrior who so often serves in the shadows,” Obama said, calling the ceremony perhaps the largest gathering of special-operations members in the history of the White House.
“I’ve lived my entire career a very private life,” Byers said last week in an interview at the Pentagon. “We don’t talk about what we do, and this honor carries with it some obligations that I need to carry out. You know, you follow those through. But I plan to continue doing my job as normal and to continue being a SEAL. It’s something I love and grew up wanting to be.”
The SEALs successfully extracted the hostage, Dilip Joseph, a doctor, from the clutches of the Taliban. But the first SEAL through the doorway ahead of Byers, Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas D. Checque, 28, was killed.
Checque posthumously received the Navy Cross, one step down from the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in the mission, Navy officials said.
Only two members of JSOC had been known to have earned the Medal of Honor: Army Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randall Shughart. They were members of Delta Force who received the award posthumously for heroism in Somalia on Oct. 3, 1993, during the battle later detailed in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
Byers, a blue-eyed, burly man, grew up in Grand Rapids, Ohio, a small town southwest of Toledo. He visited the Pentagon with his wife and 11-year-old daughter last week, clean-shaven and in a khaki uniform, a dramatic departure from the camouflage and thick beard he has worn in combat.
His father served in the Navy during World War II, and the younger Byers decided at an early age to join the military and pursue becoming a SEAL, he said.
“I liked everything about what they represented, or what I thought they represented,” Byers said. “The difficult missions they take on, the secrecy around what they do, the special operations aspect, the cool gear, the good equipment.”
Byers enlisted in 1998 after graduating from high school, initially becoming a Navy corpsman and serving as a medic. He first served at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center, a hospital in Chicago run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and as corpsman with the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
He was assigned to his first operational SEAL team in May 2004 and has remained assigned to SEAL teams based in Little Creek, Va., according to biographical information released by the Navy. He has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Specifics about Byers’ time overseas are scant, but he has earned two Purple Hearts for being wounded in combat and five Bronze Stars with V device, a lower-level but still prestigious award that recognizes heroism.
A Roman Catholic, he said he has drawn strength for years from praying to St. Michael the Archangel, who in the Book of Revelation led an army in heaven against evil forces.
“My entire career in combat operations, I’ve always worn a St. Michael the Archangel patch on my back,” he said. “And I got that off of a guy in my first Iraq tour. That patch is really special to me because every single mission I’ve ever done, I’ve always said a prayer to St. Michael to protect and watch over us, and I think those prayers are a good aspect and a big aspect of what helps sustain me through all those times away from home and away from my wife and away from my daughter and friends and family.”
Asked what he has done since 2012, Byers would say only that it is “whatever the nation has asked.”
He said he plans to stay in the military as long as he loves his job and said he wants to make others who have earned the Navy SEAL insignia, the Trident, proud.
“That’s the most important thing: how our brothers in the community view us,” he said. “That’s what keeps us going. You earn your Trident every day, and you’re only as good as that day. You don’t rest on what you did in the past. You keep driving forward.”
