Florent Groberg was born in Poissy, outside Paris, to a French mother of Algerian descent, and moved to Maryland as a boy with his American stepfather. He did not speak English until he was eleven. He became a citizen in 2001, ran competitive middle distance at the University of Maryland, renounced his French citizenship and joined the US Army in 2008 — a decision he described simply as paying a debt.
On 8 August 2012 he was a captain commanding the personal security detail for a party of American and Afghan officers walking to a meeting in Asadabad, in Kunar province. Two motorcycles cut across the column and a man in local dress walked backwards out of a side street towards the group, moving strangely.
Groberg ran at him, grabbed his vest, felt the explosives underneath, and threw him bodily to the ground and away from the officers — with his sergeant, Andrew Mahoney, pushing with him. The bomb detonated on the ground metres away. The blast killed four people, including a second bomber's victims, and tore away most of Groberg's left calf; a piece of his leg bone was found in his boot.
He spent nearly three years at Walter Reed and had thirty-three operations. They saved the leg. Four men who had been standing where the bomber was heading did not come home, and he has said that the Medal of Honor the President gave him in November 2015 belongs to them.
He was the first immigrant-born recipient of the medal since the Vietnam War, and the first born in France since the American Civil War. He works in the defence industry now and speaks, often, about what it means to choose a country.
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