Salvatore Giunta Quotes

That was the primary conundrum when fighting in the Korengal Valley: distinguishing between the real enemy and the imagined enemy; between fighters and people who were aiding and abetting. It made a difficult war nearly impossible, and an ugly war almost indescribably brutal.

People die, and sometimes there's not a damn thing you can do about it. But that doesn't make it any easier to accept.

When you hold a buddy in your arms and watch his skin turn gray, when you can feel his life slipping away, it's almost impossible not to walk around afterward in something of a stupor, asking yourself repeatedly: How did this happen? Why wasn't it me? But you have to let it go.

All these freedoms and pleasures we enjoy as Americans were bestowed upon us, but they came at a great cost.

I think about my daughter often when I'm out traveling around, giving speeches, shaking hands, talking about my friends in the military. I want her to be proud of me, and to know that what I'm doing is important. I want her to know that I accept the Medal of Honor not for myself, but because it provides a forum for talking about my brothers and the job they are doing, and the sacrifices they've made. Those men and women who do the fighting- too often, they don't get to talk. I want their voices to be heard.

When I was sixteen years old, I thought my dad was the stupidest man I'd ever met in my entire life. I couldn't see why I had to listen to him or take his advice or follow his rules. What did we fight about? You might better ask what we didn't fight about. Every interaction was cause for antagonism and verbal jousting. Simply put, I was an idiot: drinking, hanging out with the boys, chasing girls, ignoring my schoolwork.. getting fat and lazy. My father had been a hard and diligent worker his whole life, so he naturally and understandably found my lack of initiative and my self-destructive tendencies somewhat disturbing. I didn't want to hear it, though. I figured as long as I wasn't being brought home by the cops, I wasn't doing anything wrong. And that wasn't true, of course. It's not the right way to look at life. But at that point in time, that's the way I saw things: through a very narrow and selfish prism.

I've come a long way since the day they first told me I'd been recommended for the Medal of Honor. That day, all I could say was "Fuck you," because that's what I really felt. A medal? For what? My buddies died that day. There is nothing to celebrate. I did what any of my fellow soldiers would have done, got lucky, and lived through it.

Every day in the Korengal Valley held the possibility of death. The sun came up every morning and the shooting started shortly thereafter. That's just the way it was. The fact that you might have to kill someone, or that you might be killed, did not burn through your head, because that was life in the valley.

I hope my daughter grows up in a world without war, a world without hate and bloodshed and pain. But I know that's a practical impossibility. So I will make sure she understands what freedom really means, and the price paid in its name. I will encourage her to embrace some type of public service, because I think that's a healthy way to express patriotism, and to share some of the burden of a free and democratic society. Do I want her to put on a uniform and carry a gun? Do I want her to know combat, or to see the horrible things I've seen? No, of course not. What father wants that for his child? But you know what? If she chooses to join the military, I will support her one hundred percent, because I know in my heart that there is no more noble path.

The president clasps the medal around my neck, and I can feel the weight of it now. We embrace for a moment- the president and me. Blinking back tears, I turn to face the audience and applause fills the room. But I know it's not for me alone. I know I am part of something bigger, something vast and still incomprehensible. I look at my mom and dad. I look at Brennan's parents, and I look at Mendoza's. And I try to communicate to Brennan and Mendoza wordlessly: This is for you... and for everyone who has fought and died. For everyone who has made the ultimate sacrifice. I am not a hero. I am just a soldier.

Having now visited Termini Imerese, I can't help but be filled with admiration for my great-grandfather. To think of that journey- from a coastal city in Sicily to Chicago and finally to Dubuque, Iowa- well, you don't do something like that unless you have a sturdy set of balls. I can only imagine the disorientation the Giuntas must have felt while passing through the great, sweeping cornfields of eastern Iowa. But I guess they figured it was worth the risk.

Every person has a first name, a middle name, and a last name. That person has a history. He has a family. He has a mother and a father, maybe a wife and a child. He has friends. Each time an American soldier dies, there is a long and powerful aftershock, rippling across continents, felt intimately by someone- maybe by many people- half a world away.

There is luck in being an American, but there is responsibility as well. Being an American means you have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom t gather and assemble, freedom to criticize the government without fear of retribution. There are many countries in the world where acting on those impulses will get you tossed into jail or killed. So exercise those rights, but keep in mind the very simple fact that you have them only because hundreds of thousands of men and women have laid down their lives for you, stretching across parts of three centuries, from the Revolutionary War, through two world wars, and through less popular conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. And Iraq. And Afghanistan. As a kid growing up in Iowa, I didn't really get any of that. I mean, I sort of got it. I understood the connection between Independence Day and the sacrifices that went into securing that independence. Mostly, though, I was like everyone else. I liked watching fireworks and eating hot dogs off a backyard grill. Still do, in fact, preferably washed down with a few cold ones. But it means much more to me now, and I have two deployments in Afghanistan to thank for that.

For my wife, Jennifer, and our daughter, Lillian.

Like most people, I can vividly recall exactly where I was when I heard the news. It was chemistry class, second period. I was a sixteen-year-old junior, wandering aimlessly through another school day, working halfheartedly on a lab assignment, trying to figure out the density of different liquids, when word filtered down to our classroom. Something about a terrible accident in New York City: a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers. Suddenly every television set in the school was lit up, and every classroom had suspended normal teaching activities to focus on this tragedy half a continent away. At that point that morning, no one knew what had happened yet. The news commentators- like everyone else- were working under the assumption that the jet had gone wildly off course and experienced some sort of catastrophic failure, resulting in a collision with one of the towers. It wasn't until the second plane ht that the unfathomable became real: This wasn't an accident- it was a terrorist attack, intentional, willful, coordinated, and almost incomprehensibly lethal. To those of us watching, it was our first view of evil.