I'd be lying if I said that I adjusted quickly and easily to a life without combat. I don't think that's possible. - Salvatore Giunta

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.

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.

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.