"Later that year [2010], Sergeant Salvatore Giunta became the first living soldier since the Vietnam War to receive the Medal of Honor. He was humbled by the honor, but uneasy and resistant to being singled out as exceptional, not when his brothers in arms such as Larry Rougle, Joshua Brennan, and Hugo Mendoza gave their last full measure and sacrificed their lives in the Korengal. In interviews, Giunta repeatedly insisted that he did only what he was trained to do, and no more than his fellow troops would have done for him in the same situation. "You just got to try to do everything you can, when its your time to do it." Giuntas fellow soldiers knew the truth. By charging through enemy fire to rescue a fellow soldier, he embodied the warrior ethos of never leaving a fallen comrade behind. His quick reactions and steadiness under fire disrupted a devastating ambush that almost certainly would have claimed many more lives. In recommending him for the Medal of Honor, his commander compared Giunta to Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in World War II, who single-handedly repelled an entire company of German infantry for the same reason that Sal Giunta fought so heroically: "Because they were killing my friends."
Salvatore Augustine Giunta is a former United States Army soldier and the first living person since the Vietnam War to receive the United States Armed Forces' highest decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor. Giunta was cited for saving the lives of members of his squad on October 25, 2007, during the War in Afghanistan. He left the United States Army in June 2011.
"There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky. A wall of bullets at every one at the same time with one crack and then a million other cracks afterwards. Theyre above you, in front of you, behind you, below you. Theyre hitting in the dirt early. Theyre going over your head. Just all over the place. They were close— as close as Ive ever seen."
"Ive come a long way since the day they first told me Id been recommended for the Medal of Honor. That day, all I could say was "Fuck you," because thats 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."
"No point in denying who and what we are."
"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 wasnt until the second plane ht that the unfathomable became real: This wasnt 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."
"When I was sixteen years old, I thought my dad was the stupidest man Id ever met in my entire life. I couldnt 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 didnt 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 didnt want to hear it, though. I figured as long as I wasnt being brought home by the cops, I wasnt doing anything wrong. And that wasnt true, of course. Its not the right way to look at life. But at that point in time, thats the way I saw things: through a very narrow and selfish prism."
"For my wife, Jennifer, and our daughter, Lillian."