Guest Author - Jeff Valentine

Imagine this scenario:

It's hot and dusty. Your throat is parched and you can feel the grit of powdery sand between your teeth.

Your body armor is heavy and you can smell the stink of your sweat and the sweat of your buddies.

It's a challenge to remain vigilant with the sun beating down on you, but it's your duty so you force yourself to be clicked-on 100%.

You're in a gun turret on top of a Humvee in Iraq, and you are the first line of defense for the four soldiers in the vehicle beneath you.

Your eyes scan faces, hands, nooks, crannies, doors, windows, shops, walls, back and forth and up and down and back again.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see an object in the air coming closer to you. It hits your chest plate and bounces down to your feet. You KNOW it's a grenade and you have a split second to make one of 3 choices, so choose well:

Choice #1:

Yell 'grenade' to warn your comrades and jump out of your gun turret to the relative safety of the ground below.

Choice #2:

Attempt to recover the grenade and throw it from the vehicle without knowing how long it has 'cooked off' before it explodes.

Choice #3

Cover the grenade with your body while shielding your fellow soldiers from the blast knowing full well that your own death is assured, while the possibility exists that your friends will live.

You may have answered with any one of the 3 choices, but no one really knows what they would actually do until they were put into this situation. Not one of the choices is necessarily the right answer, but you know without a doubt which one is the most heroic, yet sacrificial, choice.

A Choice Made and Lives Saved:

On the 4th of December, 2006 in the middle of Iraq, PFC Ross A. McGinnis was faced with a similar scenario. Ross, against standard Army training, chose to enact choice #3. A grenade landed in his gun turret while on patrol, and instead of just saving himself, or tempting fate by retrieving a live grenade, PFC Ross McGinnis jumped on the grenade. He saved the lives of 4 of his comrades in arms and lost his own life in the process.

That young man is and always will be a HERO.

President Bush posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, our nations highest military award, to PFC Ross A. McGinnis this week for conspicuous gallantry and valor above and beyond the call of duty. The MOH was accepted by Ross's Mom and Dad.

McGinnis had a split second decision to make...he could have jumped...he didn't.

I imagine there are a minimum of 4 people out there right now, who are truly grateful for his selfless act.

The halls of Valhalla have accepted another warrior.

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This article is OVER but not OUT!

Feel free to continue the conversation at the Veterans Forum or send me an
email with your thoughts.