The door-kickers of SEAL Team 6 actually use grappling skills in combat, as Edward Byers‘ experience attests:
As the team got within 25 meters of the compound, a sentry at the door was alerted to their presence. The first member of the team, Petty Officer First Class Nicolas Checque, shot at the guard and ran towards the door of the compound. He fell wounded by an AK-47 round to the head as he charged into the building.
Byers was the second man inside the building, sprinting in on Checque’s heels.
“There were some blankets hanging up; it wasn’t like a typical door, so you couldn’t just open the door and walk in,” Byers recalled. “When I finally [made my way through the blankets], down my area of responsibility there was an enemy that I engaged with and then I saw another person that was moving across the floor. I didn’t know whether or not that person was [the hostage] or if it was just an enemy coming to and trying to get some weapons, so by the time I got to him, I was able to get on top of him, straddle him, pin him down with my legs.”
Locked in hand-to-hand combat with the unknown man underneath him, Byers managed to subdue him with one hand and use the other to adjust the focus of his night-vision goggles. Having done so, he saw that the man was one of the captors and engaged him with his weapon.
“At the same time, we’re calling out, trying to find the location of the American hostage,” Byers said.
Joseph called out, alerting the SEALs to his presence, three to five feet away from where Byers had grappled with the guard. Byers immediately tackled the captive American, using his own body and body armor to shield him from the fighting.
From this position, Byers noticed another man close by.
“It ended up being an enemy who had grenades and a weapon on him within arms’ reach,” Byers said. “And I was able to pin him to the wall by his throat until our team was able to come in and take care of that threat.”
The entire raid was over in a matter of minutes.
Byers is the first living sailor to receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.
Two other SEALs have received the medal posthumously since Sept. 11, 2001: Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, for heroic actions in Iraq in 2006; and Lt. Michael Murphy, for valor during Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan in 2005.