Fifteen years after leaving the Marine Corps, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer put on the uniform again. In 2025, he reenlisted, becoming the first Medal of Honor recipient to do so.
Meyer was 36 when he returned. He had served in Afghanistan, faced a difficult adjustment to civilian life and spent years building a life beyond the military. Still, he said, his wish to serve had never really left him.
In an interview ahead of Veterans Day, Meyer said taking off the uniform did not end his sense of duty. He disagrees with the idea that receiving the Medal of Honor means a person has already done enough. To him, someone has done their part only when they have done all they can.
He sees Veterans Day as a chance to remember that service can continue after military life ends. Being a veteran, he said, is not only a label for something in the past; it can also describe what a person is still doing.
After reenlisting, Meyer entered training to become a reconnaissance Marine. He completed the demanding course in his late 30s, describing the experience at 38 as one of the hardest things he had ever done.
His first period of service included the 2009 Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. Meyer was 21. He had been told to stay with the vehicles at a rally point while other members of his team accompanied Afghan troops toward a village about a mile away.
The patrol came under attack from more than 50 insurgents positioned on the surrounding slopes. Meyer and Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez could hear the fighting over the radio. Four members of Meyer’s team were caught in the ambush.
After repeatedly seeking permission to move in, Meyer and Rodriguez-Chavez drove toward the battle, with Meyer operating the gun turret. He has said he did not think of the decision as heroic; he saw it as keeping a promise to the people he served with.
They made several trips into the ambush, helping get wounded troops out while Meyer continued looking for his teammates. At some point, he said, he accepted that he might die, but intended to keep doing whatever he could until his last breath.
The four teammates were eventually found dead. Meyer received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.
Leaving the Marines the next year brought its own struggles. Meyer has said the horrors of war followed him home, and that finding a new sense of purpose was among the hardest parts of civilian life. Success, by itself, was not what he was after. He wanted to know that his work mattered.
Years later, while talking with Marines at Camp Pendleton, Meyer found himself revisiting that question. A Marine in a leadership course asked whether it was still worth serving. He had a family, could earn more outside the military and nevertheless loved the work.
Meyer told him it was worth it, but afterward felt uneasy. He was asking someone else to accept the sacrifices of continued service while remaining outside the military himself. Meyer said he promised the group he would either reenlist or stop giving that advice.
It took about two years for him to return. Once he did, he pursued a long-held ambition: becoming a reconnaissance Marine. As a young man, he had seen a poster for Recon Marines in a recruiting office and regarded them as the people others in the Corps hoped to become.
At 37 and 38, physical fitness was not necessarily his biggest obstacle. Recovery was. Meyer said the accumulated fatigue hit harder at his age, while younger trainees seemed able to bounce back quickly.
The course also brought him into close contact with Marines almost 20 years younger than the people he had served with in Afghanistan. Meyer came away impressed, rejecting the idea that the newer generation is weaker. He said young service members rise to the expectations set for them.
The Corps had changed since Meyer left in 2010, he said, but he considered many of those changes necessary. During one training break, younger Marines spent an hour explaining their newer terminology to him. He often found himself learning from them, and thought they approached some things more intelligently.
Meyer does not believe today’s young service members have a generational problem. He said they still seek the challenge, purpose and sense of belonging that have drawn people to military service for years.
