Found this great article today that mentions Sgt. Rafael Peralta and much more. Check it out here. I am going to paste the whole thing since its so good.
THERE IS the war and there is war, and the two are different. “The war” describes operations launched and concluded, lists friendly and enemy casualties, and perhaps sketches a poignant representative moment or two during combat or at a grave site. “War” is something else: It is the death-attended actions of men and women committed under the grimmest circumstances to accomplishing an objective while protecting their comrades. “The war” is about history; “war,” often, about heroes.
The American media may be saying too much about the war and too little about war and the bravery of those who wage it in Iraq and Afghanistan, a bravery so profound that reading about it can make you tight in the throat just when you forgot that feeling was part of your emotional panoply. The media’s relative neglect of reporting war without the “the” may not stem from any particular ideological bias or political cynicism. “Popular” 20th-century wars gave us a few household names–Alvin York, Roger Young, Audie Murphy–but it took late-century historians like Stephen Ambrose to paint live figures on the battlefield portrait, detailing their features to reveal our fathers and grandfathers. There was more heroism than we knew, more than a few Hollywood feature films could capture.
Today’s op-ed page aims to honor those now at war, the soldiers and Marines, supported by elements of the Air Force and Navy, who operate from a higher platform of love–for their fellow soldiers, for the decent people of Iraq–than most of us in our peaceful comfort will ever attain. Not all of America’s best young people are in uniform, but many in uniform represent the best of the best of their generation. In Iraq, especially, they are called upon to fight like tigers and to soothe like nurses with precious little time for transition. And all the while they are pitted against an enemy that is like a malignant ghost–invisible because he looks like everyone else, sometimes unkillable because, in the case of suicide bombers, he is already functionally “dead,” and able to inflict awful harm on those he wishes to frighten. Would you want the job that 20-year-olds in Iraq are now shouldering with spirit and determination?
Read Oliver North’s column to find out about one hero of Iraq, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, posthumously in line for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Consider Marine Capt. Brian Chontosh, a Navy Cross winner who in a fit of bullet-proof fury dismounted his Humvee with a gun in each hand to kill or wound 40 of Saddam’s soldiers firing from ambush; salute Staff Sgt. Gerald Wolford of the 82nd Airborne, who, with bullets dancing all around his disabled vehicle, ordered his crew to pull out and single-handedly laid down covering machine-gun fire for exposed infantry. He got a Silver Star.
Not every hero is destined to wear so revered a medal. Some receive–as this area too sadly knows–just one Purple Heart, laid across a coffin. But they are far from victims. Each such medal includes a shield, the symbol of a defender, bestowed upon one who risked his life and shed his blood in that role. That is “war,” and reason alone to embrace our warriors.
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