Fifteen years after Dakota Meyer left the Marine Corps, the Medal of Honor recipient decided to put the uniform back on â becoming the first with the award to ever reenlist.
Meyer was 36. He had fought in Afghanistan, struggled with the transition home from war and spent years building a life outside the military. But he said the desire to serve never went away.
“Every day after I took that uniform off, that desire to serve didn’t just end because my commitment to the country did,” Meyer told Fox News Digital in an interview ahead of Veterans Day.
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Meyer rejects the idea that receiving the Medal of Honor meant he had already done enough.
“I think sometimes it’s looked at as you’ve done your part, and I am wholeheartedly against that,” he said. “I believe that the only time you’ve done your part is when you’ve done all that you can.”
For Meyer, Veterans Day is a reminder that service does not necessarily end when someone leaves the military.
“Sometimes we look at the veteran title as it is something that represents something we’ve done,” Meyer said. “And it’s not. It’s something that we are doing, and it is something that we can continue to do.”
Meyer reenlisted in 2025 and later entered the training pipeline to become a reconnaissance Marine, completing the grueling course in his late 30s.
“To be able to do that at 38, it was definitely one of the â hands down â probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do,” Meyer said.
His first stint in the Marines had taken him to Afghanistan, where at 21 he fought in the 2009 Battle of Ganjgal in Kunar Province.
Meyer had been assigned to remain with the vehicles at a rally point while other members of his team accompanied Afghan troops toward the village roughly a mile away. The patrol was ambushed by more than 50 insurgents firing from fortified positions on the surrounding slopes.
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Meyer and Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez could hear the battle unfolding over the radio. Four members of Meyer’s team were trapped inside the ambush.
After repeatedly asking for permission to go in, Meyer and Rodriguez-Chavez drove toward the fighting, with Meyer manning the gun turret.
“I think often we try to make these decisions as if it’s some heroic decision, and it’s really not,” Meyer said. “It’s just about following through on what my promise that I had made to them.”
The pair made repeated trips into the ambush, helping evacuate wounded troops as Meyer continued searching for his teammates.
“I think it was at that point that I did realize that I just accepted that I was going to die,” Meyer recalled. “But I was gonna make sure that I would do everything I could up until that last breath.”
His four teammates were ultimately found dead. Meyer would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.
Leaving the Marines the following year brought a different battle.
“I struggled. I mean, I struggled,” Meyer said. “The horrors of war
