WASHINGTON – The U.S. special operations soldier killed Thursday during a raid in Iraq to free hostages from their Islamic State captors was a veteran of more than one dozen deployments and earned a handful of awards for battlefield valor. Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler displayed his bravery one final time, coming to the aid of Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were under fire in the pre-dawn raid at a prison compound outside of Hawijah in the Kirkuk Province, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday. Wheeler died later Thursday in Irbil where he was evacuated following the raid. The 39-year-old soldier from Roland, Okla. will posthumously be awarded the Purple Heart medal. “When a...
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