Kyle Carpenter Biography

Kyle Carpenter is a retired United States Marine who received the United States' highest military honor, the Medal of Honor for his actions in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2010. Carpenter was the youngest living Medal of Honor recipient at the time he received it.

Carpenter was born in Jackson, Mississippi on October 17, 1989, and raised in Flowood. He enlisted in the Marine Corps’ delayed entry program at age 19 in February 2009, and completed Recruit Training in July 2009 at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina.

In July 2010, Corporal Carpenter deployed to Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. On November 21, 2010, while joining his team to fight off a Taliban attack in a small village the Marines had nicknamed Shadier between two villages nicknamed Shady and Shadiest. He suffered severe injuries to his face and right arm from the blast of an enemy hand grenade; after-action reports state that he threw himself in front of the grenade to protect a fellow Marine, Lance Cpl. Nick Eufrazio.

As a patient then attached to Wounded Warrior Battalion East, Bethesda, Maryland on Thursday, November 10, 2011, he participated in the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at the dedication of the newly integrated Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with then United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

On June 19, 2014, Corporal Carpenter received the Medal of Honor at a ceremony in the White House in Washington, D.C.

He is the eighth living recipient to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Carpenter served as an Automatic Rifleman with Company F, 2d Battalion, 9th Marines, Regimental Combat Team-1, 1st Marine Division (Forward), I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

In July 2013, he was medically retired as a Corporal due to his wounds. Carpenter is credited with attempting to shield a fellow Marine, Lance Cpl. Nick Eufrazio, from Plymouth, Massachusetts, from a grenade blast on a rooftop security post in combat operations near Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan on November 21, 2010. Both Marines survived the blast but suffered major injuries. Carpenter lost his right eye and most of his teeth. His jaw and right arm were shattered and he has undergone dozens of surgeries.

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