The son of a Colorado Springs woman will receive the Medal of Honor next month, becoming the first airman to receive the nation’s highest award for valor since the Vietnam War, the White House announced Friday.

The medal will be awarded posthumously to his widow, Valerie Nessel, on Aug. 22 by President Donald Trump at the White House.

“I was beginning to think it was not ever going to happen,” Terry Chapman said Friday after learning from special operations officials that the White House had announced the award to her son, Tech Sgt. John A. Chapman. “I’m glad that the story’s finally out.”

Chapman, 36, died March 4, 2002, during a firefight with al-Qaida fighters on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan.

The combat controller, attached to SEAL Team 6, was participating in Operation Anaconda, which aimed to clear eastern Afghanistan’s Shahi Kot valley of al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents. Chapman volunteered to join a team attempting to rescue Navy SEAL Neal Roberts, who had fallen from the helicopter he and Chapman were riding on when it was hit by enemy fire earlier that day. After the heavily damaged helicopter made an emergency landing, Chapman “began coordinating close air support and a rescue effort to retrieve Roberts” from atop the mountain, according to an Air Force account of the battle.

Another helicopter arrived and transported the team back to the 10,000-foot mountaintop, which would later become known as Roberts Ridge. Upon landing, Chapman killed two enemy fighters and was advancing toward a machine gun nest when his team came under fire from three sides, pinning them down.

“Chapman broke cover to rush another enemy position,” allowing his team members to escape, according to the account. “At close range and with little cover, he exchanged fire with the enemy until dying from multiple wounds.”

According to Friday’s announcement from the White House, a wounded Chapman fought “relentlessly” until his death.

For Terry Chapman, the award is a long time coming. Her son was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross – the service’s second highest award – in 2003. Rumors had been swirling about a possible Medal of Honor for Chapman since a 2016 New York Times article stated that new technology used to examine aircraft video from the battle had led Air Force officials to conclude he was still alive when the rest of the team retreated.

According to the officials, “Sergeant Chapman not only was alive, but also fought on alone for more than an hour after the SEALs had retreated,” the newspaper reported.

“In more recent times, I found out what actually transpired” that day, she said. “By the time that article came out, it wasn’t as shocking as it could have been had I not known (what happened) ahead of time.”

Terry Chapman was informed in March that her son would be awarded the Medal of Honor, but didn’t learn the date until Friday.

Meanwhile, Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt Slabinski, who made the decision to retreat without Chapman, was awarded the Medal of Honor in May for “conspicuous gallantry” for his effort to save Roberts and other troops wounded in the day’s battle.

“I’m trying to direct what everybody’s got going on, trying to see what’s going on with John (Chapman); I’m already 95 percent certain in my mind that he’s been killed,” Slabinski recounted in a 2016 interview with The New York Times. “That’s why I was like, ‘O.K., we’ve got to move.'”

Chapman should “be recognized for his valor” if Air Force officials were correct, Slabinski said, but “still expressed skepticism that the new evidence – gleaned from software that can isolate pixel representations of people and help track their movements – was reliable,” the newspaper reported.

Does Friday’s announcement make Terry Chapman any more proud of her son?

“I was proud of him before all this happened,” she said.

Were her son alive, she says he would likely react as most medal recipients do and shift focus away from himself.

“He would be embarrassed by all the attention that’s going to be put toward him,” she said. “I think he would be like the other guys who say, ‘I’m just doing my job.'”

Chapman was one of two airmen killed during the 17-hour battle, the first airmen to die in combat since the Persian Gulf War. In all, four soldiers and a SEAL – Roberts – died during the Battle at Takur Ghar, making it the deadliest day U.S. forces had seen thus far in Afghanistan.

All bodies, including Chapman’s, were recovered by the end of the day.

As of June 26, there have been 3,502 Medals of Honor recipients, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society of the United States. Chapman’s will be the 3,503rd.

Chapman has three siblings, two of whom live in Colorado Springs.

The last airman to receive the Medal of Honor was Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger. He was awarded it posthumously by then-President Barack Obama in 2010 for his actions in Laos on March 11, 1968, during the Vietnam War.