But two years after that May 2005 firefight - and a year after he finished his Reserve contract - Hunter, 28, received the Silver Star on June 18 at City Hall in Albuquerque, N.M., for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity" in Iraq during the summer of 2005 - including two fire fights in which he pulled a fellow Marine out of enemy fire.
Originally an administrative clerk at Albuquerque-based Delta Company, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion, Hunter deployed to Iraq as an infantry fire team leader with Columbus, Ohio-based Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, in March 2005.
In the early hours of May 25, then-Cpl. Hunter set out on foot with Lima Company toward Haditha's market district in the opening days of Operation New Market.
According to Hunter, the company planned to arrive at the market by sunrise in order to catch insurgents by surprise. He said the trip seemed like any other, until a Marine shot a stray dog that had charged him. About ten seconds later, "all hell broke loose," Hunter said.
The award citation released by the Corps and interviews with Hunter and his fellow Marines reveal the platoon was ambushed by small arms fire that seriously wounded an officer on the patrol. Sgt. David Wimberg, Hunter's squad leader, ordered the squad to take a house to their left, where they were receiving fire.
Wimberg hopped the fence and opened the gate for Hunter's fire team, then kicked in the door and ran inside with Hunter on his heels.
"Sgt. Wimberg barely took a second step into the room before a muzzle to an AK-47 was presented [at his chest] and fired several times," Hunter said in a recap of the events he wrote after the firefight.
When Wimberg fell to the ground, "I instinctively reached down and grabbed him, pulling him back out of the house," Hunter wrote. "I dragged him to the right of the door under a window and lay on top of him while I heard him wheeze for us to frag the room."
Hunter called for two of his squad mates to take Wimberg to their corpsman while he pushed forward with the attack on the house.
"In the back of my mind, I knew that I was now in charge of the squad and I had to get control of the situation," he wrote.
"Acting as squad leader, [Hunter] reorganized his Marines and led them into the insurgent position…ultimately securing the house with close-range small arms fire and hand grenades," according to the Corps release. Wimberg later died as a result of his wounds, but Hunter's actions during the firefight "enabled his company to regain its momentum," the release said.
Two months later, Hunter's platoon was tasked with sweeping a couple small towns west of Baghdad the morning of July 28. According to Hunter, the patrol had been uneventful until Cpl. Andre Williams started to knock on the door of a house in Cykla.
"Right as he went to knock, a heavy-machine gun shot him through the door," Hunter said. That kicked off a four-hour firefight between nine insurgents bottled inside the house and Hunter's platoon.
When some of the insurgents fled to another nearby house, Hunter maneuvered his squad closer, using their own cover fire to move to a rooftop overlooking the second house.
A couple hours into the firefight, the other two squads were still engaged in the at the first house, but rounds were no longer coming from the second house. When Hunter's squad cleared the house, they found an empty rocket-propelled grenade launcher, but no shooter.
They moved to the back yard where livestock were frantically running around following the hours of shooting going on around them. In the midst of the chaos, two of Hunter's Marines broke off to search two small cinder block buildings for enemy fighters.
As Lance Cpl. Christopher Lyons - Hunter's closest friend in the platoon - crossed the threshold of one of the buildings, he was shot by an insurgent fortified inside.
Hunter and his Marines took cover in a room of the building, which was still under construction. The wall was about three feet high, with huge portions missing for windows, Hunter said.
Crouched against his portion of the wall, about 15 feet from the insurgent's position, "I could see the muzzle flashes from the doorway [from] the guy shooting…while the AK-47 was just taking chunks out of the wall," Hunter said.
"It got pretty scary there for a minute."
During that fight, Hunter "shot two enemies and made two unsuccessful attempts in the face of enemy fire to retrieve a wounded Marine," the Corps release said.
Hunter "then ran across a fire-swept street to link up with a M1A1 tank, guided it's fire and directed it to breach the building," the release added. "This action neutralized one insurgent and allowed the extraction" of Lyons, who had been mortally wounded.
According to Shawn Bryan, who deployed as a sergeant with Lima Company in 2005, Hunter promised Lyons he'd take care of his family if anything happened to Lyons. After Lyons' death, Hunter established an email friendship with Bethany, Lyons' widow - a relationship that eventually blossomed into a romantic one.
"Because [Hunter] knew Christopher and loved him…I think that's what brought us together in the beginning," said Bethany. "We've both helped each other in that grieving process we both went through."
They were married last May, and Hunter, who has a year left in the Individual Ready Reserve, is in the process of adopting Lyons' daughter. The two also had a son in February.
"He's my hero…not just for what he did there, but what he did when he came home," said Bryan.
Meanwhile, Hunter said he has "mixed feelings" about his Silver Star.
"I honestly don't believe I did anything all that heroic," Hunter said. "I feel like I was just doing my job," he said. He'd "gladly trade" the medal if it would bring back Wimberg or Lyons.
"I know he says he didn't do anything too heroic…but in our eyes - the Wimbergs and mine - it was," Bethany countered.
Hunter currently has six classes left at the University of New Mexico, and he's working for Bryan in Albuquerque. A soft-spoken Marine who prefers to stay out of the spotlight, Hunter said his classmates have no idea he received the medal.
"He got the Silver Star for what he did," said Bryan. "But he did what he did because that's who he is."
