‘Hero’ veteran has overcome dark past

[NYVet]

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1115344


An Iraq combat vet hailed a hero for saving a motorcyclist whose leg was severed in a crash was once jailed for kidnapping and assaulting his ex-girlfriend - but has become a decorated soldier as he seeks to turn his life around.

Massachusetts National Guardsman John Melson, 37, was praised by medics for using a belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding after dad-of-three Mark Cronin lost his left leg in a collision with a suspected drunken driver on Neponset River Bridge in Quincy early Saturday morning.

But in 1997, while serving as a Boston police officer, Melson hit the headlines for a different reason. The former Marine was jailed for three and a half years after a court heard how he scaled a 13-story building armed with a bayonet, and kidnapped and assaulted an ex-girlfriend.

“I had one bad night. But I have moved on and, I think, tried to move my life in a better direction,” Melson said yesterday. “I live with that guilt every day. I can’t take back what I did.”

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“I signed up because I can’t sit at home and watch Americans dying, and I want my kids to be proud of me one day,” Melson said.

He was awarded the Purple Heart in 2006 after taking on Taliban militants in a two-day gun battle, despite taking a shrapnel hit to the leg in a rocket attack, Department of Defense records show.

In January 2007, Melson was awarded an Army Commendation with Valor when his brave actions saved the Afghan unit he was training from an ambush in the Mizan Valley, records show.