Michael Anthony Monsoor

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Michael A. Monsoor (left) during a patrol in Iraq, 2006

Michael Anthony Monsoor (born April 5, 1981 in Garden Grove , California , USA ; † September 29, 2006 in Ramadi , Al-Anbar , Iraq ) was a second class petty officer in the United States Navy Seals and served as a machine gunner in the Iraq war . He was fatally wounded during his service and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor , the highest honorary distinction in the US Congress . He was the second US Navy Seal to lose his life in the Iraq War.

Training and deployment to Iraq

Michael Monsoor joined the United States Navy on March 21, 2001, and completed basic training at Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes , Illinois . He then attended the Quartermaster “A” School and was briefly deployed to the Sigonella military airfield in Italy . The subsequent Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL (BUD / S) training in Coronado , California , he completed on September 2, 2004 as one of the best in his class. Until March 2005 he completed the advanced training of the Navy Seals, u. a. parachute training at Fort Benning , cold weather combat training at Kodiak and a six-month qualification process in Coronado. In the following months he was assigned to SEAL Team 3, Delta Platoon, with whom he relocated to the Ramadi area, Iraq in April 2006.

On September 29, 2006, he was in the embattled Ramadi, together with three teammates and eight Iraqi soldiers, on the roof of a building as a surveillance post when a firefight with Iraqi fighters developed. During the battle, one fighter was killed and another wounded when an insurgent hurled a fragmentation grenade on the roof. Although Monsoor could have been the only one to get to safety from the roof due to his choice of location, he threw himself on the grenade instead to protect his comrades and died about 30 minutes later from the serious injuries he sustained from the explosion. His three teammates and the Iraqi soldiers survived.

Awards

He was awarded the Bronze Star for his outstanding assignments as a machine gunner in eleven combat operations . On May 9, 2006, he rescued a wounded comrade from enemy fire and was awarded the Silver Star for this.

On April 8, 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in the White House for his actions in Ramadi .

Also in 2008, the US Navy announced that it would name a Zumwalt-class destroyer USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) . The ship was christened on June 18, 2016 by his mother, Sally Monsoor.

Michael Monsoor was inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes on April 9, 2008 .

A Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 2082 Lemon Station was named after Michael Monsoor.

Web links

Commons : Michael Anthony Monsoor  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Navy SEAL to Receive Medal of Honor Posthumously. In: Official Website of the United States Navy. March 31, 2008, accessed July 20, 2020 .
  2. ^ Zachary Cohen: US Navy's newest stealth destroyer christened. CNN , June 19, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 .
  3. ^ Navy SEAL, Medal of Honor Recipient, to be Inducted into the Hall of Heroes. In: Official Website of the United States Navy. April 3, 2008, accessed July 20, 2020 .
  4. ↑ VFW Named After Fallen Navy SEAL. In: Official Website of the United States Navy. April 24, 2012, accessed July 20, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Monsoor, Michael Anthony
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American soldier
DATE OF BIRTH April 5th 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Garden Grove
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 2006
Place of death Ramadi