Senate passes bill to posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Central Florida Army Sergeant

OVIEDO, Fla. — A Central Florida veteran who died saving his fellow soldiers could soon receive the nation’s highest honor.

On Tuesday, The U.S. Senate approved a bipartisan bill to posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Sgt. First Class Alwyn Cashe for his actions.

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The bill, introduced by Florida Reps. Stephanie Murphy and Michael Waltz, would also change a federal law that requires the Medal of Honor to be awarded within five years of the actions for which the medal is being given.

In October of 2005, Sgt. Cashe was in a Bradley fighting vehicle just north of Baghdad, along the Tigris River, when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.

Cashe, while on fire himself and open to enemy gunfire, repeatedly returned to the burning vehicle, pulling six men and an Iraqi interpreter to safety.

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“He pulled them out as he got to them, because they were his boys...they were his men,” Cashe’s sister Kasinal White recalls.

A month later, Cashe died of his injuries.

In 2014, the army named its newest Army Reserve center in Sanford after him.

Having seen her son honored with a building, and a Silver Star- one of the military’s highest honors- Cashe’s mother also passed away just a few months later.

However, Sgt. Cashe was denied the Medal of Honor due to a technicality regarding combat, an oversight his family knew was wrong.

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“It is my desire to see it to fruition,” White says. “I told my kids I can just not leave this world without this happening.”

With the Murphy/Waltz House bill approved by the Senate Tuesday, all that’s left is for the President to agree and present the honor to Sgt. Cashe’s family.

Cox Media Group