Medal of Honor for Bravery in Afghanistan

[Mitch Cronin]

From NY Times article

In an emotional ceremony today, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to an Army staff sergeant who placed himself in the line of fire in Afghanistan to try to save his fellow squad-mates and to protect and comfort a dying American soldier.

The young staff sergeant, Salvatore A. Giunta, now 25, was an Army specialist when he took a bullet to the chest during a firefight in eastern Afghanistan three years ago. He is the first living service member to receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s most prestigious award, for action during any war since Vietnam.

Sergeant Giunta and the other soldiers of Company B, Second Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, were part of a campaign to provide food, winter clothing and medical care to Afghans in remote villages. They were ambushed in the Korangal Valley in a coordinated attack from three sides.

In a packed ceremony in the East Room before Sergeant Giunta’s family, squad mates, and the parents of two soldiers who were killed in the ambush, Mr. Obama recounted the events on the night of Oct. 25.

“The moon was full; the light it cast was enough to travel by without using their night-vision goggles,” Mr. Obama said, as Sergeant Giunta standing at his side, looking straight ahead. “They hadn’t traveled a quarter mile before the silence was shattered. It was an ambush so close that the cracks of the guns and the whizzes of the bullets were simultaneous.”

The two lead squad men went down, as did a third who was struck in the helmet. Sergeant Giunta charged into the wall of bullets to pull him to safety, Mr. Obama said. He was hit twice, but protected by his body armor. .

The sergeant could see two wounded Americans, Mr. Obama recounted.

By now, the East Room was so silent you could hear a rustle from across the room. One Army officer took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Sergeant Giunta looked down, as the president described how he and his squad mates threw grenades, which they used as cover to run toward the wounded soldiers. All this, they did under constant fire, Mr. Obama said. Finally, they reached one of the men. As other soldiers tended to him, Sergeant Giunta sprinted ahead.

“He crested a hill alone with no cover but the dust kicked up by the storm of bullets still biting into the ground,” Mr. Obama said.

And there, Sergeant Giunta saw “a chilling sight” — the silhouettes of two insurgents carrying away the other wounded American — his friend, Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan. Sergeant Giunta leaped forward, and fatally shot one insurgent while wounding the other. Then he rushed to his friend. He dragged him to cover, and stayed with him, trying to stop the bleeding, for 30 minutes, until help arrived.

Sergeant Brennan died later of his wounds. So did Specialist Hugo V. Mendoza, the platoon medic. Five other members of First Platoon were wounded.

Speaking to reporters after receiving the award, Sergeant Giunta said the honor was “bittersweet.”

“I lost two dear friends of mine,” he said. “I would give this back in a second to have my friends with me right now.”

After months of patrols in the Korangal Valley that cost the American military dearly, the outposts there disbanded this spring, with forces moved to provide security to larger population centers.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/medal-of-honor-for-bravery-in-afghanistan/?partner=rss&emc=rss

:tu:

[Peter Gill]

Sebastian Junger wrote a pretty good book about fighting in and around the Korangal, lots of excessive rhetoric and lousy metaphors but a good read if you want to know more about that corner of the war.

[Mitch Cronin]

Thanks Peter, but if you were asking me, I'd have to say the less I know about warfare, the better. The history of human savagery makes me ashamed to be a member of the human race. ...that we use our "intelligence" to wage war is the ultimate of ironies. That we declare ourselves the greater of beasts on this planet, yet we - those 6 billion plus, of us alive this moment, have never seen a time when our species was not killing each other somewhere on Earth, ...is the greatest of bulls#it.

....but that's a rant you didn't deserve.

However, a man who does what that man did, in those conditions, Yessir. He deserves that medal!

That's what's so damned troubling about mankind.... we're such idiots and as$holes, yet we're capable of so much decency.

[boestar]

Well said Mitch