True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job. - Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war. Any soldier worth his salt should be anti-war. And still there are things worth fighting for.'''

The increasing pressure to launch the ground war early was making me crazy. I could guess what was going on figured Cheney and Powell were caught in the middle. There had to be a contingent of hawks in Washington who did not want to stop until we'd punished Saddam. We'd been bombing Iraq for more than a month, but that wasn't good enough. These were guys who'd seen John Wayne in The Green Beret, they'd seen Rambo, they'd seen Patton, and it was easy for them to pound their desks and say, "By God, we've got to go in there and kick ass! Gotta punish that son of a bitch!" Of course, none of them was going to get shot at. None of them would have to answer to the mothers and fathers of dead soldiers and Marines.

Over the years I've met many people who were heroes, and the interesting thing I've found about every single one of them, bar one, was that they did not think of themselves as heroes. They would say things like, "I couldn't leave my buddy out there. I couldn't do that." Or, someone would say, "Those bastards were shooting at us, and I was going to shoot back before one of my men got hurt." Or, "Shucks, sir, it was my duty." They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, valor is also in the eye of the beholder. Not one of the people who hold the Medal of Honor said at the time he took action, "Well, I think I'm getting ready to carry out a heroic act." Absolutely not.
In the minds of every single one of them at the time was something like, "Gosh, I've got to do it, because it's my duty to my country." Not even that. Rather, "It's my duty to my outfit." And not even that. "It's my duty to my buddy on my right, or my buddy on my left. That's what it was all about, as the stories in this volume will show. That's truly what it was all about.
And somebody else- the recipients probably don't even know to this day who- saw them do it. And said, "There's a hero." And truly the recipients of this great award, I am sure, even to this day would say, "Gosh, it was just my duty. It was just my job. It was just my buddy It was just my outfit. I had to do it." And that's what makes them heroes in my mind. The men who tell their stories in this book- indeed all the recipients of the Medal of Honor- embody the sense of duty in its deepest form. We thank them for doing their duty in serving their country.