May 24, 2008 -- A 19-year-old Pennsylvania soldier who unhesitatingly threw himself on a grenade and gave his life to save four buddies in Iraq will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor. The nation's highest military honor will be conferred June 2 on Army Pfc. Ross McGinnis, of Knox, the White House announced yesterday. The Army gunner "distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism," said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.
McGinnis was perched in the gunner's hatch of a Humvee on patrol in Baghdad on Dec. 4, 2006, when a grenade flew by him and landed inside where four soldiers were sitting. He called out a warning, then leaped into the vehicle and covered the grenade with his body. The grenade exploded, killing him.
He could easily have saved his own life by jumping off the truck, said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. "The instinct is [to] jump out of the vehicle, but his four buddies were in the vehicle with him . . . and he chose to place himself on top of the grenade and absorb the impact, and it saved their lives," she said.
That heroic action came as no surprise to McGinnis' father. "His friends were the most important thing in his life," Thomas McGinnis told The Washington Post on the day of his son's funeral in March 2007. "He had a way with people, of letting them get close to him and getting to know the real Ross. "He had the opportunity to escape," McGinnis said. "He chose not to."
His son wanted to be a soldier since he was a little boy, he said. The youngster informed his kindergarten teacher that he wanted to be an "Army man" - and he enlisted on his 17th birthday, McGinnis told The Washington Post.
In an interview that appeared in The Army Times last year, Staff Sgt. Ian Newland, 27, one of those inside the Humvee, described how McGinnis reacted as they rolled through the alleyways of Adhamiyah as the last truck in a convoy and someone dropped the grenade from a rooftop.
First, the teen soldier tried to catch the grenade, but it dropped into the Humvee.
"When he yelled, 'Grenade!' I wasn't even alarmed because we'd seen so many. Then I saw it. It was next to me," The Army Times quoted him as saying. Then he saw McGinnis drop down and smother the grenade with his body. Newland, who was badly injured in the blast, had no doubt as to why McGinnis sacrificed himself.
"Why he did it? Because we were his brothers," he told USA Today. "He loved us."
No matter how you feel about this war, or the administration (and Congress) who ultimately got us into this unfortunate war in Iraq, you cannot escape the sense of overwhelming speechlessness upon reading the accounts leading up the untimely death of this American hero.
McGinnis was perched in the gunner's hatch of a Humvee on patrol in Baghdad on Dec. 4, 2006, when a grenade flew by him and landed inside where four soldiers were sitting. He called out a warning, then leaped into the vehicle and covered the grenade with his body. The grenade exploded, killing him.
He could easily have saved his own life by jumping off the truck, said Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman. "The instinct is [to] jump out of the vehicle, but his four buddies were in the vehicle with him . . . and he chose to place himself on top of the grenade and absorb the impact, and it saved their lives," she said.
That heroic action came as no surprise to McGinnis' father. "His friends were the most important thing in his life," Thomas McGinnis told The Washington Post on the day of his son's funeral in March 2007. "He had a way with people, of letting them get close to him and getting to know the real Ross. "He had the opportunity to escape," McGinnis said. "He chose not to."
His son wanted to be a soldier since he was a little boy, he said. The youngster informed his kindergarten teacher that he wanted to be an "Army man" - and he enlisted on his 17th birthday, McGinnis told The Washington Post.
In an interview that appeared in The Army Times last year, Staff Sgt. Ian Newland, 27, one of those inside the Humvee, described how McGinnis reacted as they rolled through the alleyways of Adhamiyah as the last truck in a convoy and someone dropped the grenade from a rooftop.
First, the teen soldier tried to catch the grenade, but it dropped into the Humvee.
"When he yelled, 'Grenade!' I wasn't even alarmed because we'd seen so many. Then I saw it. It was next to me," The Army Times quoted him as saying. Then he saw McGinnis drop down and smother the grenade with his body. Newland, who was badly injured in the blast, had no doubt as to why McGinnis sacrificed himself.
"Why he did it? Because we were his brothers," he told USA Today. "He loved us."
No matter how you feel about this war, or the administration (and Congress) who ultimately got us into this unfortunate war in Iraq, you cannot escape the sense of overwhelming speechlessness upon reading the accounts leading up the untimely death of this American hero.Is it disingenuous of me to post this larger than life story on a blog so obviously politically left of this young man? Maybe. Given the opportunity to read the many liberal postings on this blog, especially when referring to the war, I have no doubt he would become so completely incensed at my left-wing rants and ravings that he would be tempted to destroy the very terminal he read them on.
I post this account from the New York Post for two reasons; one, to let as many people as possible know of the incredible heroism that is going on in the Middle East on the part of our servicemen and women on a near daily basis, and two, to explain that our calls for "retreat" as the right-wingers so deftly espouse, our persistent demands that our troops come home are not meant to besmirch the work and heroic efforts there on the part of our forces especially Pfc. McGinnis, pictured to the right. We liberal bloggers raise our voices of opposition for one reason, and one reason alone. We want them home. Quickly and safely.
As proud as I am of our military, of the young men and women who serve us so nobly, who continue (and voluntarily) risk their lives for the sakes of their fellow soldiers day in and day out, I cannot hear of a story such as this, a recounting of heroism that defies every innate human behavior we have ingrained within us, without questioning the necessity for this young man to be there, in a country dangerous due to a civil war exploding inside it, and a people so desperate to get us out of their country they will risk their own lives to kill us in it.
Seeing a grenade tossed at his Humvee's direction, he first tries to catch it....failing that, when the grenade falls inside the Humvee containing his comrades in arms, in a split second he dives on top of it, guaranteeing he will die in order to save the lives of those he serves with, and loves.
I'll never know that kind of courage. I'll never know how someone can completely ignore every element of human nature and self survival, and in a nano-second risk his own life in order to save the lives of the soldiers he serves with. And I will certainly never know how a 19 year old man develops these kinds of traits, this kind of honor and valor, at a time of his life when my biggest accomplishment was being able to open a beer bottle with my belt buckle.
I have frequently stated in this blog that "there are thousands of soldiers dying in vein in the Middle East without purpose, or reason." Pfc. McGinnis: I promise you I will never say that again. You proved me wrong.
Oh, I am still all for getting out of Iraq, and I still feel passionately that this is a war, as Obama states over and over, never should have been waged, or authorized", but I cannot, and should not say our military is dying over there for no reason. You chose to die for all of the right reasons, in a landscape and situation I wish to God you were never put into.
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