‘He Didn’t Save My Life’: Veterans Question Rep. Cory Mills’ Bronze Star

The Florida Republican was awarded a Bronze Star for his purported actions in 2003. Five people who served with him say they don’t remember Mills being on the scene.

U.S. Congress
Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

Under “intense enemy fire” in Iraq in 2003, Rep. Cory Mills rushed to the aid of two soldiers who had been struck, applied emergency life-saving care at the “great risk to his own life,” helped evacuate them and saved their lives, according to the document that recommended the Florida lawmaker for a Bronze Star.

Mills was awarded the star after January 2021. Four years later, five people who served with him — including two of the men the document says Mills saved in different incidents — say they have no recollection of Mills being at the incidents listed on the form.

“He didn’t save my life,” Private First Class Joe Heit, who is cited by name on the recommendation form as one of the soldiers Mills saved, told NOTUS. “I don’t recall him being there either.”