Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth hosts a reenlistment ceremony for Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Dakota Meyer in the Hall of Heroes at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., April 17, 2025. (Alexander Kubitza/Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — Sgt. Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient, recommitted to serve his country Thursday during an enlistment ceremony hosted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Meyer joining the Marine Corps Reserve comes nearly 15 years after he was awarded the nation’s highest military award for combat valor in 2011 by former President Barack Obama for his actions during an ambush in the Ganjgal Valley of Afghanistan.

At the time of the ambush in 2009, Meyer was a 21-year-old corporal serving as a turret gunner with an embedded training team from the III Marine Expeditionary Force out of Okinawa, Japan. Meyer left active-duty service in 2010 and has since become a firefighter and motivational speaker.

“The mission never left me,” said Meyer, now 36. “You might hang up the uniform and you might continue that fight on in other ways — as a civilian, as a veteran, as a firefighter, all those things — but I just don’t think the warrior inside you is ever going to go away.”

Meyer fought down a mountainside in Afghanistan to rescue wounded troops and recover the bodies of those already killed. He ventured into direct enemy fire times to reach the troops, defying orders to stay in a safer position. Marine Corps officials credited Meyer with helping save the lives of 36 U.S. and Afghan troops. The ambush claimed the lives of five Marines and nine Afghan allies.

Meyer was only the third living service member from the war in Afghanistan to receive the award, and the first living Marine to be given the honor for battlefield heroics since the Vietnam War.

“This is a guy who has put it all on the line and done the most difficult things you can imagine, testing the human resolve, and yet after all of that, he is standing before us today saying, ‘I want to do more,’ ” Hegseth said during the ceremony at the Pentagon.

Hegseth, who Meyer described as a longtime friend, said Meyer is an example of the Defense Department’s commitment to ensure the country’s “best and brightest are willing to wear the uniform.”

“You are responding to something we have seen Americans across the country respond to since President [Donald] Trump was reelected, which is a renewed inspiration to want to serve this country,” Hegseth said.

The process for Meyer to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve began about two years ago. The decision to join the Reserve force, Meyer said, was something that he has considered since he left active-duty service.

“I have always been willing to serve this great nation because I believe in the people of the United States of America,” Meyer told reporters before the ceremony.

Following Meyer’s active-duty service, he became a sharp critic of former President Joe Biden’s administration over its withdrawal from Afghanistan. He’s been outspoken about the jailing of another Marine — Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller — who criticized the Biden administration for the 2021 withdrawal. Scheller made his comments in social media posts while in uniform, which is a violation of military conduct.

But Meyer said he would refrain from politics while in uniform.

“The great part about being in the Reserve is I’m still a citizen when I’m not on orders,” he said. “When I’m on orders I’ll comply obviously with whatever the standard is.”

Meyer participated in an early Thursday morning workout session with Hegseth, as well as the National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Marines at Fort Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia, according to the Defense Department. Gabbard, who is an Army reservist, attended the ceremony at the Pentagon.

Meyer said he has spent the past month in earnest training to ensure he met the Marine Corps standard. He will join a unit as a sergeant, working with the unit two weeks out of the year.

Throughout the enlistment process, he said, he has been asked multiple times why he was recommitting to serve.

“I just love my country,” Meyer said. “I believe in that with everything that I have got, and at the end of the day, I have got a lot more to give.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.