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Medal of Honor recipient held line-of-fire alone during attack

WASHINGTON — Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts was bleeding so badly, he couldn’t stand, but the young US solider in Afghanistan refused to stop fighting.

It was July 13, 2008, and he was in one of the fiercest battles of the war, outside the village of Wanat.

Nine GIs were defending a small patch of elevated land, with sandbags as protection.

All of them were soon wounded or killed under the barrage of fire from the insurgents.

The then-22-year-old Pitts, of Nashua, NH, was the only one alive, seriously injured with shrapnel in both of his legs and left arm. He was determined to die trying to prevent his post from falling.

“Against that onslaught, one American held the line,” President Obama said Monday in awarding Pitts the Medal of Honor.

Pitts lobbed grenades at insurgents determined to take over his outpost and kept up the fight for more than an hour, allowing the US to maintain the post.

“We did it together,” Pitts told the Military Times. “No one guy carried that day.”