Page 8 - Sergeant Chapman News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Come forward and read the citation? thank you. >> the president of the united states of america has awarded in the name of congress the medal of honor posthumously to technical sergeant john h. chapman for risk of life above the call of duty. technical sergeant john a. chapman distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism as an air force special tactics combat controller attached to i a navy, sea, air and land seal team, conducting reconnaissance operations in afghanistan in 2002. the helicopter was ambushed causing a teammate to fall into an entrenched group of combat ants below. the team vo...

Donovan, air force vice chief of staff steven wilson and chief master sergeant of the air force, kathleen wright. i also want to thank va secretary robert wilkie for joining us. you are doing a great job. the vets are very happy. there's been a lot of great reports, thank you very much. along with senators john bozeman, richard blumenthal, bob casey, chris murphy and pat toomey and representative matt gaetz and john larson. thank you all for being here very much. thank you all very much, appreciate it. we're gathered together this afternoon to pay tribute to a fallen warrior, a great warrior. ...

Hand-to-hand combat. this was in march of 2002. the investigation into what happened took more than two and a half years and involved videos like this one from air force -- from the air force from drones that were flying overhead. sergeant chapman was embedded with s.e.a.l. team 6, the same unit that killed osama bin laden. today sergeant chapman's mother and his widow will receive the honor on the sergeant's behalf. nbc nightly news anchor lester holt joins me now. lester spoke with the sergeant's widow to talk about what this ceremony means to their family. lester, sometimes our viewers don'...

>> this was a joint special operations team. i think at the heart of it was s.e.a.l. team 6 but they'll go in with an air force air controller. >> and that circle by the way is chapman. >> they believe that's him. they did this not only from the drone imagery but the reports of those on the ground, the radio calls. they could begin to piece together where he was so that's -- this is, again, technology only the last couple of years that allowed them to do this. his job in these cases had things gone as they expected, if they need air cover here or a bomb planted over here, he gets on the horn a...

Heroic actions in the same battle we are remembering today. john chapman grew up in windsor locks, connecticut. from a very young age john was determined to protect those in need. in kindergarten, john noticed that his classmate, bill brooks, was being bullied. as bill says, john stepped in and saved me. in his high school yearbook, john quoted these words. give yourself before taking of someone else. that's very far-sighted. john lived by that motto every single day. everybody that knew him said that's the way he lived. two years after he graduated high school, john enlisted in the united sta...