On November 20, 2015, Islamist militants stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali, taking roughly 170 hostages and killing 20 people.
Kyle Morgan, a Delta Force operator then serving as a special operations advisor at the US Embassy, received word of the attack and of Americans trapped inside. He moved toward the hotel, linked up with a small group of US personnel, and helped enter the building under fire, smoke, and grenade blasts to locate and extract hostages floor by floor.
Morgan later described kicking through doors into a smoke-filled conference room to pull out a man who was barely hanging on, then fighting through a stairwell contact where he came face-to-face with the attackers. He stayed until he accounted for the last American he was looking for.
For his actions that day he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor. He has said it was the longest day of his life and the reason he was there.
The years after Mali brought a different fight: concussions, PTSD, addiction, and a near-fatal overdose. Morgan has been open that the hardest rescue was his own. He credits faith and sobriety with rebuilding his family and now leads Blu Bearing Solutions, teaching a protector mindset to law enforcement and civilians.