Montana Native Poshumously Awarded Medal of Honor
BUTTE, Mont -- Staff Sergeant Travis W. Atkins, U.S. Army, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by the President on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, in a White House ceremony.
Atkins, a Montana native, entered the Army on November 16, 2000, at the Butte Military Entrance Processing Station.
On June 1, 2007, Atkins gave his life, shielding his comrades from a suicide bomber during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Five years later, on June 1, 2012, the Butte MEPS dedicated their oath of enlistment ceremony room, where Atkins took his own oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, to him. The ceremony was attended by then-Colonel John E. Walsh, Montana Army National Guard and then-Command Sergeant Major Clyde A. Glenn, U.S. Army, 192nd Infantry Brigade, Fort Benning, Georgia, who both made keynote addresses. Memorials to Atkins were then affixed to the wall.
All 65 MEPS ceremony rooms around the nation are dedicated to local or regional heroes who may have had only one thing in common – each one took the same oath of enlistment in a dignified ceremony room such as the one in the Butte MEPS.