Medal Of Honor Goes To First Living Recipient Since 1976; El Pasoan Was Part Of Battle

An Army staff sergeant who stepped into the line of fire to help a pair of comrades on the Afghan battlefield has been given a Medal of Honor, the nation’s top military award.

President Barack Obama awarded the medal to Salvatore Giunta Tuesday. That makes the 25-year-old Iowan the first living service member from the Iraq or Afghanistan wars to be so honored. Seven others have received the award posthumously.

Obama called Giunta a solider who is “as humble as he is heroic” and said the ceremony was a “joyous occasion.”

The Army says Giunta was a rifle team leader in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley when his squad was split in two on Oct. 25, 2007 after an ambush by insurgents. While under fire, Giunta pulled a fellow soldier to cover and rescued another who was being dragged away by the enemy.

All of the members of Giunta’s company were hit with shrapnel, Obama said during the ceremony on Tuesday. Two men, Sgt. Josh Brennan of McFarland, Wisconsin, and Spc. Hugo “Doc” Mendoza of El Paso, died from wounds suffered in the battle. Brennan was Giunta’s best friend. Mendoza was an Army medic.

Mendoza had been shot in the leg trying to help another soldier and bled out through his femoral artery.

The parents of Mendoza and Brennan attended the Medal of Honor ceremony.

Giunta told CNN when he first learned he would receive the Medal of Honor, “I felt lost. I felt kind of angry … just because, you know, this is so big. This is, it came at such a price. It came at the price of a good buddy of mine, not just Brennan. But Mendoza. Mendoza died that night as well. These two men on that day made the biggest sacrifice anyone can ever make. And it’s not for a paycheck.”

Giunta told the Army News Service that Mendoza and Brennan were better soldiers than he was.

“That’s part of what gets me so much. I was with Brennan for the deployment before and he’s always been a better Soldier than me,” Giunta said. “He was Alpha Team leader. I was Bravo Team leader. There’s a reason for that. Spc. Mendoza was a combat medic. He did everything we did, plus when we came back dehydrated, ‘Oh I’m this, oh I’m that, I have this blister Doc,’ he would fix it. He went above and beyond every single day.”

Mendoza grew up in El Paso and attended Hanks High School before he moved to Phoenix during his junior year at Hanks. He is buried at Fort Bliss National Cemetery.

Read about the battle here.