Clint Romesha became a legend in 2009 after he led the charge against a monstrous Taliban attack in Afghanistan, rallying his fellow soldiers to regain control of their camp after it had been overrun by more than 300 insurgents.
(FOX)- In 2013, President Obama presented him with the Medal of Honor for his actions in that battle.
In an interview with Fox News, the 34-year-old veteran vividly recalled his comrades’ battle cry: “We’re going to take this bitch back!”
Romesha was a green 18-year-old who had grown up in Lake City, Calif. — “a quiet little town [where] life was always easy” — when he enlisted in the Army in 1999. But he became an experienced warrior, serving in Kosovo and Iraq before volunteering to serve in Afghanistan in his fourth tour of duty.
He said he went from “growing up in one of the greatest countries that has ever existed, to see what tyranny and poverty and real challenges are like firsthand.”
On Oct. 3, 2009, Romesha was a staff sergeant and section leader when the Taliban attacked Combat Outpost Keating in eastern Afghanistan.
The camp, he recalled, was strategically flawed, “set at the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains on every side. Very isolated, very remote, just a spot that you shake your head when you see it, but you also accept the mission that’s given and understand that you’re there doing a job and you got your great guys around you.”
He said the attack, known today as the Battle of Kamdesh, began at around 6 a.m., and he realized quickly that it wasn’t the typical gunfire he’d come to expect from the Taliban.