Soldier at Fort Polk gets his long overdue Purple Heart

A soldier from Fort Polk who'd been wounded by Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood has finally received the medal he should've gotten long ago:

Nov. 5, 2009, dawned like most any other day for Pvt. Alan Carroll. The 20-year-old native of Anchorage, Alaska, had recently finished combat engineer training and was assigned to the 510th Sapper Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas.

“There was nothing real significant about the day,” Carroll said. “Just a normal day.”

But by day’s end, it would be anything but insignificant as Carroll and more than 40 of his friends, fellow soldiers and Army civilians would be wounded by Maj. Nidal Hasan in a shooting at the sprawling post in central Texas.

On May 21, Staff Sgt. Alan Carroll was awarded the Purple Heart during a ceremony at Fort Polk for the wounds he received in the shooting on Nov. 5, 2009, based on recent legislation that authorized those injured in the attack to receive the medal.

Carroll recently reflected on the day that changed his life. His unit was preparing for a deployment to Afghanistan that day, and he and some of his buddies were waiting to be checked by medical personnel after receiving their smallpox vaccinations. At about 1:30 p.m., their lives would change forever.

Read the rest at the link. The top brass owe tremendous apologies to hard-working soldiers for all the negligence they caused that led to this tragedy.