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The Marine Corps has recommended that a former corporal receive the Medal of Honor for braving a hail of enemy fire in September 2009 to pull the bodies of four U.S. troops from a kill zone in eastern Afghanistan, Marine Corps Times has learned.

Dakota Meyer, 22, of Greensburg, Ky., was recommended for the nation’s highest award for valor, according to a source with knowledge of the process, speaking on condition of anonymity.

... Meyer was recommended for his actions on Sept. 8, 2009, near the village of Ganjgal in Kunar province. He charged into a kill zone on foot and alone to find three missing Marines and a Navy corpsman who had been pinned down under enemy fire for hours by about 150 well-armed insurgents. Already wounded by shrapnel before braving enemy fire, he found them dead and stripped of their gear and weapons, and carried them out of the kill zone with the help of Afghan soldiers, according to military documents obtained by Marine Corps Times.

Reached for comment Monday, Meyer was unaware he has been recommended for the Medal of Honor, saying he does not feel like a hero and still dwells on what happened that day. He was a member of Embedded Training Team 2-8 training Afghan forces when the ambush occurred, and good friends with the troops he pulled from the kill zone. He left the Corps in June after his four-year contract with the service expired.

... “Whatever comes out of it, it’s for those guys,” he said of the recommendation. “I feel like the furthest thing from a hero. I feel like I let my guys down because I didn’t bring them home alive.”

On Saturday, Commandant Gen. Jim Amos told reporters at Camp Pendleton, Calif., that the Corps’ last top officer, Gen. James Conway, made the recommendation shortly before retiring Oct. 22. Amos would not say who had been recommended.

“We have a nomination that General Conway signed and forwarded to the secretary of the Navy his last week as the commandant,” Amos said. “I read the citation; I read the whole paper. As you can imagine for something like that, we’re talking binders. I read it cover to cover, and it watered my eyes.”

... In a five-page hand-written statement included in the investigation’s final report, Meyer describes attempting to get to his missing buddies with another service member and being turned back by enemy fire at least twice in an armored vehicle equipped with a .50-caliber machine gun. He was wounded by shrapnel after an enemy rifle round hit the vehicle’s gun turret, he says in the statement.

Meyer, then 21, went into the kill zone on foot after helicopter pilots called on to respond said they could not help because the fighting on the ground was too fierce, the statement said. He found his buddies in a trench where the pilots had spotted them.

“I checked them all for a pulse. There [sic] bodies were already stiff,” Meyer said in a sworn statement he was asked to provide military investigators. “I found SSgt Kenefick facedown in the trench w/ his GPS in his hand. His face appeared as if he was screaming. He had been shot in the head.”

Meyer said Monday that he was glad to see the military honor Gunnery Sgt. Johnson, Lt. Johnson, Kenefick and Layton in September with Bronze Stars with “V” device. Kenefick also was posthumously promoted to gunnery sergeant.

Meyer hopes the recognition helps the families find closure, he said, even though he has struggled to find his own.

“I thought that once we hit the one-year mark, I’d start dealing with it,” he said of the ambush’s first anniversary. “You hope that storm ends soon, you know?”