Thomas Payne (soldier)

Thomas Patrick Payne is a United States Army Delta Force sergeant major and instructor. He was born and raised in South Carolina and after graduating high school there he joined the army in 2002. He was a rifleman and sniper before becoming a special operations team member. He has been deployed 17 times including to Iraq and Afghanistan, where he sustained a serious grenade injury in 2010 that nearly ended his career. On October 22, 2015, he participated in a hostage rescue mission in an area of northern Iraq controlled by the Islamic State at the time, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism on September 11, 2020.