Brooke Toner, the widow of Navy Lt. (j.g.) Francis L. Toner, accepted the Silver Star medal from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen in behalf of her late husband, for heroism he displayed during an attack on the operating base where he was stationed. Records show that Toner died while trying to subdue an insurgent who infiltrated Operating Base Shaheen, near Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, on March 27, 2009. He had been exercising with two fellow officers by jogging around the base’s perimeter at the time. The attacker had shot his comrades. “Toner, unarmed, verbally challenged the insurgent and continued to advance until he was fatally wounded,” the award citation stated. “I’ve … seen enough citations to know that he was basically walking straight into the enemy’s fire,” Mullen said during the ceremony.
