{"id":104935,"date":"2020-09-12T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-09-12T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=104935"},"modified":"2020-09-12T09:59:28","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T13:59:28","slug":"trump-presents-sergeant-major-thomas-patrick-payne-with-his-medal-of-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=104935","title":{"rendered":"Trump presents Sergeant Major Thomas “Patrick” Payne with his Medal of Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SGM Thomas “Patrick” Payne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Poetrooper sent me a reminder that we missed notifying y’all that Sergeant Major Payne has received his Medal of Honor. It was presented to him at the White House yesterday by the president.<\/p>\n

I talked about SGM Payne last week in my Valor Friday<\/a>. At the time, information on the quiet professional was scarce.<\/p>\n

Payne and his KIA teammate Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler (awarded with a posthumous Silver Star for his final battle) were assigned to the reclusive Special Operations Command – 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta. Commonly known as “Delta Force” or just “Delta”, this is the US military’s most elite special operations organization. Drawing from the ranks of Army Rangers and Special Forces units, Delta is made up of the best of the best of the best.<\/p>\n

Payne is only the third Delta operator to receive the Medal of Honor and he is the first non-posthumous award. During the Battle of Mogadishu, Delta Force snipers Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart volunteered to be dropped off at the crash site of one of the Black Hawk helicopters that was being overrun. Gordon and Shugart extricated the chopper’s crew and set up firing positions, but both ultimately died from enemy fire in defense of the downed crew. They were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.<\/p>\n

Payne had served with Delta since 2007 and with the Ranger Battalions before that. In 2010 he suffered a severe combat injury in Afghanistan, but worked his way back to duty. He’s participated in 17 deployments in his 18 years of service.<\/p>\n

Payne’s teammate on his Medal of Honor earning mission was Joshua Wheeler, who didn’t make it back. Wheeler, was 39 years old and had been in the Army for 20 years. He had at least 14 deployments under his belt in that time. In addition to the posthumous Silver Star and Purple Heart, he was posthumously recognized by the Cherokee Nation (of which he was a member) with the Medal of Patriotism. He also had received eleven<\/strong><\/em> Bronze Star Medals (four w\/ “V” for valor) among many other individual and unit decorations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetrooper sent me a reminder that we missed notifying y’all that Sergeant Major Payne has received … Trump presents Sergeant Major Thomas “Patrick” Payne with his Medal of Honor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,232,410,400,593,389],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-army-news","category-bravo-zulu","category-iraq","category-medal-of-honor","category-valor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104937,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104935\/revisions\/104937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}