01/11/2012 15:41
3rd Australian wins Victoria Cross
Taliban bullets tearing up the earth around his boots and zipping past his ears left Australian Cpl. Daniel Keighran in no doubt about the risks he was taking each time he broke cover to deliberately draw enemy fire, the Fox News reports.
His actions on Aug. 24, 2010, near the village of Derapet in central Uruzgan province helped his 40-man joint Australian-Afghan army patrol escape an ambush by 100 insurgents with a single casualty and on Thursday earned him the British Commonwealth's highest military award, the Victoria Cross.
The 29-year-old gold miner from the Outback town of Kalgoorlie, who remains an army reservist, is the third Australian to earn the ultimate accolade for valor in the 11-year-old Afghan campaign. A New Zealand commando also won the Victoria Cross in 2007 and a British paratrooper was given a posthumous award the same year.