Tears Are Shed at the White House for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq

[Ghostrider]

Tears Are Shed at the White House for a Marine’s Bravery in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 — In April 2004, Cpl. Jason L. Dunham, an ordinary recruit from a small town in upstate New York, did something extraordinary: he threw himself on a grenade to shield two men in his unit as they battled insurgents on a road in Iraq.

On Thursday, President Bush gave Corporal Dunham, who was 22 when he died, the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, presenting it to his mother and father in a somber East Room ceremony attended by his relatives and friends.

In an interview on Tuesday, as she was preparing to make the six-hour trip to Washington for the ceremony, Corporal Dunham’s mother, Debra, said she wished her son could “receive it himself.” “But we will receive it for him, and he will be watching us do that,” she said.

Corporal Dunham, who was a rifle squad leader in the Marines, is the second soldier to receive the medal for service in the current war in Iraq. Prior to that, the 1993 conflict in Mogadishu, Somalia, was the last to produce Medal of Honor recipients; two Delta Army Force soldiers died protecting a downed helicopter pilot there in actions later depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

In presenting the award to the Dunhams, President Bush, who on Wednesday night told the nation he would send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, cited Corporal Dunham’s uncommon valor and said that he “gave his own life so that the men under his command might live.”

The president shed tears during the ceremony.

“He was the guy who signed on for an extra two months in Iraq so he could stay with his squad,” President Bush said. “As he explained it, he wanted to make sure that everyone makes it home alive. Corporal Dunham took that promise seriously and would give his own life to make it good.”

Corporal Dunham’s story is of a young man from a little-known town called Scio, about 80 miles southeast of Buffalo, who saw the military not just as a way to serve the country but also as an opportunity to pay for college.

He had just enrolled at a college near his battalion’s base in Twentynine Palms, Calif., before being deployed to Iraq, where his actions placed him in a “select group” of the nation’s military heroes, as President Bush put it on Thursday.

Mr. Bush approved Corporal Dunham’s nomination for the medal in November, ending a two-year process that required his commanding officers to investigate his actions in battle.

Since the medal was created during the Civil War, it has been bestowed on more than 3,400 soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

While recipients include the likes of Theodore Roosevelt (for his charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War), it was not entirely an elite medal at first. But the requirements were tightened and only slightly more than 840 medals have been awarded since World War II.

In his hometown of Scio, with a population of about 2,000, Corporal Dunham was considered an accomplished athlete in high school. His batting average in a single season, .414, still stands as a local league record.

His mother, a teacher, said that he was quietly generous and that she learned of one of his acts of kindness only after he had died. In a letter, a childhood friend described how Corporal Dunham went out of his way to console her when other children taunted her on a bus ride home.

“All he did was sit with her on the bus,” his mother recalled. “He had a quiet way about doing the right thing.”

After joining the Marines, he was chosen at 22 to become a squad leader with Kilo Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment in September 2003. His mother said he had wanted to continue his college education and also to take the New York State Police entrance exam once he returned from Iraq.

But the events of April 14, 2004, changed everything. That day, Corporal Dunham and his men were in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border, when they received reports that insurgents had ambushed a marine convoy. Corporal Dunham and his men boarded Humvees and headed toward the area, where they spotted a convoy of cars filled with Iraqis fleeing, according to various accounts.

The patrol led by Corporal Dunham stopped the Iraqi convoy and began inspecting the vehicles for weapons. As Corporal Dunham inspected one vehicle, a man jumped out and grabbed him by the throat. Two other marines ran over to subdue the attacker, who dropped a grenade, according to the accounts. It was then that Corporal Dunham made a fateful decision: he threw his Kevlar helmet and held it down over the grenade. He died a few days later from his wounds .

In addition to his mother and his father, Daniel, Corporal Dunham is survived by two brothers and a sister: Justin, 23, Kyle, 18, and Katelyn, 14. For a family still deeply in grief, the award presented on Thursday seemed to bring some measure of relief.

“He will be recognized and memorialized in history,” his mother said. “He is in the company of remarkable men.”

This story is really something else.
Link to the page to find the story here

-Ghost

[minigunmonk]

Stories like this actualy make me feel somewhat guilty playing combat 'games'. While Im playing soldiers and killing an imaginary enemy with no threat to my physical wellbeing, their are men and women out there dieing to carry out their missions. Im interested to know what serving personel think of gamers and our quest for 'realistic' war sims...

[dhimmi]

I think we have more than a few active and recently active service members playing regularly.
I share minimonk's feelings and only hope that the people over there in the struggle know that many of us wish we had what it takes to join them.

[minigunmonk]

Amen..

[Ghostrider]

Originally Posted by dhimmi

I share minimonk's feelings and only hope that the people over there in the struggle know that many of us wish we had what it takes to join them.

Military Advisors in the team (some of the R-DEVs) are (or were) on active duty in the military deployed in the recent conflicts.

I believe that, up to some point, those that seek realistic war sims, like Armed Assault and Project Reality Mod, want/wanted to be in some branch of the military, but choose not to for some reason.

I have my reasons, but they were not my choosing, nor my parents.


-Ghost

[[R-MOD]Wasteland]

Wow, that's one selfless individual. Loved his men more than his own life.

Just watched Blackhawk Down tonight. Those Delta Sergeants were a brave couple as well.

[NikovK]

I couldn't join because I'm medically invalid (brain scratch). I fear I'll be bitter in twenty years for not having "done my part". But I do take a small comfort in knowing a lot of veterans enjoy this mod. Kinda like buying a round, you know?

Still, its as futile as trying to justify your sins with your good deeds before God. Nobody can ever make up for it by their own virtue.

[dhimmi]

Chapter XXIII



1. To speak seldom is natural.


2. A gusty wind doesn't last the morning,

3. a thunderstorm doesn't last the day.

4. Who makes these? Heaven and Earth.

5. If Heaven and Earth cannot make these last,

6. how much less could man!


7. Thus those of Tao work in accordance with Tao;

8. those of virtue, in accordance with virtue;

9. and those of loss, in accordance with loss.

10. Those of virtue, Tao indeed gains them;

11. And those of loss, Tao indeed loses them.

[The_motivator]

I heard about this story probably about a week or two after it happened.

It's about fucking time the medal was awarded. Medals don't make everything right, but it is well deserved. After he initially took the wounds, he fought for months(i think) in a hospital. He was unconcious, but his body and what was left of his mind wasn't giving up. It's an amazing story, if you go to your library and they have the book, read it.

I'm surprised the story got this much press though. I thought naked human pyramids were the order of the day for the press.

Edit:
Dhimmi, are you Jewish too? Or just another Kufar like the rest of us?

[dhimmi]

I thought it was kafir but I am a unrepentant pagan.