Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta

Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta

In 2007, while serving for the second time in Afghanistan, Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta and his unit were operating in Korengal Valley, what was possibly the worst place in the country for a US soldier to be. On the night of October 25, Sgt. Giunta and his squad walked into an ambush. They were assaulted by thirteen insurgents who were armed with rifles, machine guns, and RPGs with fire from as near as fifteen feet. Sgt. Giunta will later say “Out of nothing – out of taking your next step – just rows of tracers, RPGs, everything happening out of nowhere with no real idea of how it just f– happened -- but it happened.”

Sgt. Brennan, who was leading the squad when the ambush occurred, was shot eight times. Sgt. Giunta helped a man who had been shot in the helmet, then gathered two men and together, using hand grenades, the three of them made their way to two more men. When Giunta ran out of grenades, he ran to find Brennan, but found two insurgents dragging him away. He fired on them, killing one and wounding the other. The wounded one released Sgt. Brennan and ran away.

Three years later, Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta became the first serviceman that was still alive from the war in Afghanistan to receive the Medal of Honor. The previous seven Medal of Honor recipients had died earning it. Giunta says that he was not trying to be brave by what he did, but that he did what he believed anyone would have done in his situation. While that may be true, not just anyone ran through the spray of enemy bullets and the blasts of RPGs to rescue a fellow soldier, he did.