Thread by @DrEricDing

👇This is Sergeant Major Payne. He is confirmed to be soon awarded the MEDAL OF HONOR for his heroism in rescuing 70 Kurdish hostages from imminent execution by ISIS captors. His selfless heroic story is worth a full thread 🧵, & everything Trump is not. military.com/daily-news/202…

2) Sgt. Maj. Thomas “Patrick” Payne, a Ranger assigned to the U.S. Army's Special Operations Command
was involved in a daring predawn raid on Oct. 22, 2015. Seeking to rescue 70 hostages, American and Kurdish commandos flew in CH-47 Chinook helicopters to a town in Northern Iraq.

3) The Kurdish Regional Government, the autonomous body that governs the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, had received a tip that the 70 prisoners, including peshmerga fighters, as the Kurdish forces are known, would soon be massacred by Islamic State militants.

4) Aerial photos of the compound showed what intelligence officials believed to be freshly dug mass graves where their bodies would be dumped.
The plan called for members of the US unit to support the Kurdish commandos in their operation
“Time was of the essence,” Payne said.

5) “There were freshly dug graves. If we didn’t action this raid, then the hostages were likely to be executed.”
The raid began with a failure. Kurdish forces attempted to make a dynamic entry by blasting a hole in the compound’s outer wall, but the blast failed.

6) The explosion alerted the ISIS militants, who opened fire on the Kurdish forces.
Payne and his unit climbed over a wall and entered the prison. The soldiers quickly cleared one of the two buildings known to house hostages. Once inside, the unit encountered enemy resistance.

7) The team used bolt cutters to break the locks off the prison doors, freeing nearly 40 hostages.
Moments later, an urgent call over the radio was received from other task force members engaged in an intense gun fight at the second building.

8) Between 10 to 20 Army soldiers, including Payne and Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler maneuvered towards the second building that Payne said was a “heavily-fortified building, which was partially on fire.” Kurdish commandos were pinned down by the gunfire.

9) At some point in his attempt to rescue the Kurdish forces, Payne’s teammate Master Sgt Wheeler was shot and killed. Wheeler was the first American killed in action since the U.S. launched renewed military intervention in Iraq against the Islamic State in 2014.

10) Wheeler was killed when he “fearlessly exposed himself” to the gunfire, according to the citation of the Silver Star he received for his actions that day.
google.com/amp/s/taskandp…

But Payne and his team couldn’t stop and mourn, but had to move on...

11) The team scaled a ladder onto the roof of the one-story building under a savage fusillade of enemy machine-gun fire from below. From their roof-top vantage point, the commandos engaged the enemy with hand grenades and small arms fire, according to the press release.

12) Payne said at that point, ISIS fighters began to detonate their suicide vests, causing the roof to shake. The team quickly moved off the roof to an entry point for building two.
ISIS fighters continued to exchange gunfire with the commandos as they entered the building.

13) Payne moved to open another fortified door. According to the press release, he managed to cut the first lock, but due to the heavy smoke from the fire, he had to hand off the bolt cutters to an Iraqi counterpart and retreat out of the building for fresh air.

14) Iraqi partner also came out for air. Payne grabbed the bolt cutters & re-entered the building to cut off the last lock. Once door kicked opened, both US & Kurdish commandos escorted ~30 more hostages out of burning building that was about to collapse and under enemy gunfire.

15) ⚠️Payne then reentered the building two more times (as the building was about to collapse🔥)to ensure every hostage was freed. One of those times he had to forcibly remove a hostages who had been too frightened to move during chaotic scene.

16) Payne joined the Army in 2002 as an infantryman and quickly made his way into the Rangers. He has deployed several times to combat zones as a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment and in various positions with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

17) He is a Purple Heart recipient from a wound he sustained in a separate 2010 mission in Afghanistan. And as a sergeant first class in 2012, Payne won the Army’s Best Ranger Competition, representing USASOC.

18) Payne is married with three children and is currently stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He is from the South Carolina towns of Batesburg-Leesville and Lugoff.

19) Payne will be awarded the Medal of Honor on Sept 11, 2020.

➡️ But one this is for sure— both Sgts Payne and Wheeler are not “losers” or “suckers”, regardless what someone says, even if that person pins their medal.

Cheers to Sgt Payne and RIP Sgt Wheeler.

20) In case you missed it, the POTUS called soldiers and Marines “losers and suckers” theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

21) Major General @PaulDEaton52 has a few choice words for Trump’s comments about the US military.