July 30, 2025 • 37 mins
On a moonlit mountaintop in Afghanistan, Salvatore Giunta ran through a hailstorm of bullets to save a fellow soldier– his best friend– from capture. It was a heroic decision, but Sal didn’t see it that way. This is the story of an extraordinary band of brothers– and how Sal learned to live with what he did.
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Episode bibliography:
Giunta, Salvatore and Joe Layden. Living with Honor: A Memoir. Threshold Editions, December 4, 2012. https://www.amazon.com/Living-Honor-Memoir-Salvatore-Giunta/dp/1451691467.
Junger, Sebastian. “Into the Valley of Death.” Vanity Fair, January 2008. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/01/afghanistan200801.
Edwards, Elisabeth. “Korengal Valley: Why the Region Is Nicknamed the ‘Valley of Death’.” War History Online, Oct 24, 2022. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/articles/korengal-valley.html.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
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(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below. Pushkin,
the staff sergeant, sat at his desk at the United
(00:48):
States Army base in Vicenza, Italy. It was September of
twoenty ten. His name was Salvatore Genta, and he was
waiting for a phone call. Just the thought of the
call made him queasy. He was pretty sure what the
news would be. There had been rumors about it for years,
(01:10):
rumors that he preferred not to think about. They were
too upsetting. But the day before he'd learned that the
call was definitely coming, so he asked his wife to
sit in the office with him. She watched his face
as he watched the phone. Sao was twenty five years
old and had been a member of the Army in
(01:33):
the one hundred and seventy third Airborne Brigade. For seven years.
He had seen some of the worst and most relentless
fighting in all of Afghanistan. He had been in the
Corangall Valley. The soldiers called it the Valley of Death
for good reason. It had been a nightmare. But it
(01:53):
was a nightmare that Sal had been willing to take
part in, excited even unlike this call. He wasn't excited
about this at all. And then the phone rang. Sal
took his wife's hand. He answered the phone and a
(02:14):
voice said, please hold for the President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm j R.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
(02:45):
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
When Sal Junta finished that phone call with the President,
he looked up and saw it wasn't just his wife
sitting in the room. There were maybe fifty people packed
(03:09):
into an office that only had space for five deaths.
They were there because Sal, their low key, unassuming friend,
was going to be the first living Medal of Honor
recipient in almost forty years. Sal's friends, his coworkers, his wife,
(03:30):
they were all so proud. But you know who wasn't proud.
Sal Junta Sald deployed to Afghanistan for the first time
(03:53):
in two thousand and five. He was twenty, a super
gung ho dude who literally couldn't wait to get into action.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I remember when they told us we had our orders
to go to Afghansian. I remember I was, it's excited
to go to war. This is what I came to do.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
He had been trained for battle, which is exactly what
he wanted, though if you asked him just a couple
of years earlier, he wasn't sure what he wanted. Back then,
he was working as a sandwich artist at the subway
shop near his family home in Iowa.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I was about to graduate high school and I didn't
have a plan. And I heard a radio commercial come on,
and I said, come on down. See the recruiter, get
a free T shirt. I want a free T shirt.
Who doesn't want a free T shirt? I'm working at somebody.
I want a free T shirt. Of course I want
a T shirt.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was the right radio ad at exactly the right time.
Sal went to the recruiting center for the T shirt,
but he came out of it with a life plan.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
This is my chance. I can make a difference, and
I can do it everywhere, but not in Cedar Rappids, Iowa.
And at that time I was ready to go somewhere else.
The Army's gonna take me everywhere except for here. So
I'll just jump on this bandwagon and see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
He decided to join the one hundred and seventy third Airborne,
which meant he would potentially be jumping out of a
plane straight into combat and.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Eighteen years old. I don't know much, but the Army
said I could spit, I could swear, I could shoot guns,
and they'll pay him one hundred and fifty bucks extra
to jump out of planes. Patriotism slash one hundred and
fifty dollars to jump out of a plane A month.
I'm in.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But once Sal got to Afghanistan. He realized that combat
wasn't quite what his eighteen year old self had pictured.
Sal and First Platoons spent most of their time at
Ford Operating Base. Below. It was in southern Afghanistan. It
was an isolated spot, nestled in the valley between the
(05:53):
soaring peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains, surrounded by almond
and apricot orchard. But Below itself was like most of
the bases in Afghanistan, pretty bleak, a mud hut turned
into a makeshift fortress, guys sleeping eight to a room,
(06:14):
and constant attacks from the Taliban. Sal and the rest
of the soldiers got really close, really fast. That'll happen
when you're living in such tight quarters far from anyone else.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
You only get thirty four other people to talk to,
So you see these people seven days a week. There's
no one else you can talk to or be with.
No psychiatrists. Gets as steep as we got on the
side of the mountain. We just because we had nothing
else to.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Do, nothing to do but talk and joke and go
on patrols and get shot at, which meant watching your friends,
your brothers get hurt.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It didn't take long into my first deployment into Afghanistan
before I really your emotions in war are a lot
different than your emotions watching war on TV. And death
is real and the hardships are painful. It's not just
painful to watch. That's truly painful on you and your boys.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Sal was still all in even after he got shot
through the leg in a firefight, but slowly his gung
ho attitude was beginning to change. About three months into
his deployment, and Id took out a humpy, killing four
soldiers and maiming a fifth. They were all members of
(07:37):
Sal's company, Company B. They were men he knew. Sal
went to the bomb site to help clean up, and
seeing the bodies was well traumatic for everyone. And just
a few days later, a different squad from bey Lowe
(07:58):
was out on patrol and one of those men, a lieutenant,
was shot and killed.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
We lost one of our lieutenants. And now that's five
in like a span of a week. And I was
already having a tough time kind of stomach and what
happened to the first four and my team years sent
me down. He goes, this is it. This is exactly
what war is. It's not going to get any better.
And that was when I truly felt that I was
in the army. I was an emotional, hurt, straught alone paying,
(08:31):
which I hadn't felt before. Three months into Afghanistan, I
was no longer excited. I had more of a zest
than ever to do my job. But it wasn't because
I was excited to do it. It was because this
is what we trained to do, and all the excitement
was gone.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Sal made it through the rest of that deployment, fighting
and sustaining and doing his job, and after a year
he returned to the base in Italy. Finally he would
have a break from combat, and even better, he'd get
to see his girlfriend, Jennifer Mueller. They had met at
(09:12):
the very start of Sal's time in Italy before he
deployed to Afghanistan. Back then, she was a student from
the University of Iowa doing a semester abroad. Now Jen
had graduated and moved to an apartment near the base.
The two were happy, thinking about the future, and then
(09:34):
Sal got the news Company B was returning to Afghanistan.
Sal's attention shifted from his future a future with Jen,
back to his buddies in first Platoon. That brotherhood of soldiers.
He knew he had to be his best for them,
and his best was going to have to be pretty great,
(09:58):
because soon enough the Company B was on their way
to the Corngau Valley. When sal arrived in the Corangaul
Valley in May of two thousand and seven, he knew
(10:21):
immediately that this deployment would be different.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
It was like nothing that I had never seen in
Afghanistan before.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
The valley itself looked lush and green, beautiful, even peaceful.
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It was all so harsh terrain. Even the little bushes
were sharp, all the little animals bit or stung or
poisoned in some way.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
The steep hillsides were covered in dense brush, which provided
the ideal hiding spots for insurgents, and they were well
armed and itching for a fight.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We were at the bottom of a valley with mountains
just cheer straight, straight up and down on every single side,
and every single place you're going to fight, you are
at the bottom and they are at the top, and
you are open and they are covered.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
There was literally no safe place to be an American
in the Corngall Valley. The roughly thirty five men of
Sal's platoon lived at fire Base Vegas. It was a
mud hut about the size of a three car garage,
no running water, spotty electricity, and very little protection from
constant enemy fire. For a shower, a hot meal, or
(11:41):
a phone call home, the guys would have to go
all the way back to the main base corn Gall outpost.
It was a multi hour walk where they'd be shot
at all the way, so they didn't go that often,
which meant Sal couldn't talk to Jen very much.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
She remembers it well, I remember the two months for
I heard from him, and then it was every month,
and when you get a phone call, it's fifteen minutes.
When a month or two goes by fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Is like a second. But at least Sal was there
with people he adored, the guys he thought of as family.
One was Josh Brennan, who'd been a football player back
in high school in Oregon. He was all endurance and toughness,
though he also had a way of making everyone around
him feel at ease. He was alpha team leader and
(12:31):
Sal was Bravo team leader.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I'd been with Brennan for maybe four years, and four
years with roughly thirty five guys. So in the Army
everyone gets to be your buddy and you'll love him
like a brother, because that's how it's set up.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Sergeant Eric Ga Yadado was their squad leader, smart and
cool headed, a perfectionist, and a brilliant fighter. Their medic
was Hugo Mendoza. At twenty nine, he was a decade
older than many of the guys at Vegas. He was
from Texas and had joined the Army to take care
(13:07):
of people as a first responder. Brennan, Gayadro, Sal and
Mendoza were really close, but still it was hard. The
men had to wear helmets and body armor all the time.
They'd risk getting shot at, even going to the latrines.
(13:27):
They would hike out for daily patrols, and each one
was slow and hard up steep trails covered in loose shale.
One wrong step and you could fall to your death.
Sal felt his body start to fall apart from the
lack of sleep and the stress of non stop fighting.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
We get shot at every single day, sometimes multiple times
a day.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
And then in late October of two thousand and seven,
the men were told were going on a new kind
of combat mission. They called it Rock Avalanche. It was
going to be the most ambitious operation the Corngall Valley
had seen, deploying four separate companies at the same time,
(14:13):
some four hundred men along with their support. The goal
was to move directly into Taliban strongholds. They'd look for
weapons and try to shut down travel routes for the insurgents.
Rock Avalanche would begin the night of October nineteenth. That night,
for the first time, Sal heard his captain wish them luck,
(14:36):
and he knew that meant they needed.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Rock Avalanche took us to where the bad guys were.
That was our job.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Sal's company went to the southwestern part of the valley,
traveling by helicopter. Their destination was a Taliban stronghold through
which weapons and money flowed in and out of the
Corngall Valley. It was like striking at the head of
the snake.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
We got in some contact for a couple times each day,
you know, maybe four or five gun fights, usually small
arms RPGs.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And then on October twenty third, three men from Company
B were shot, one fatally. So in the very week
hours of the twenty fifth, Sal and the rest of
first Platoon went to support Second Platoon, which was going
to a village near the shooting. In the four days
(15:32):
of the mission, the men had slept fewer than ten
hours total. First platoon marched for two or three hours
until they reached their assigned position around five a m.
It was a spot called Hancho Hill. They would stay
there while second platoon worked its way through the village
trying to get information about what had happened at the shooting.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Second latoon was going to go into the village, and
then we were going to be on one of the
side weeks over watching the village so if anything anyone
started coming from the outside to come and attack them
in the village, we already have the high ground.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Sal's platoon, that's first platoon, stayed there all day, not
talking much, trying to keep vigilant, knowing that the insurgents
were close.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And we sat there twelve hours, fourteen hours, just watching
and waiting, and the whole time we're thinking, okay, somewhere here,
there should be somewhere down here.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What they didn't realize was that a group of at
least a dozen enemy fighters had crept up behind them
and were waiting patiently for First Platoon to start moving
back towards Corungall outpost. There was only one path they
could take.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
The sun went down, the commander said we're going to
pull out. We'll go back. There was probably a two
and a half hour walk back to the Corngall outpost.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
There were eighteen men from first Platoon walking in single file.
Sergeant Brennan was out in front. He shouldn't even have
been there. His time in Afghanistan had been up a
month earlier, but his contract had been extended. That was
very common at this point in the war, so there
(17:20):
he was walking point as usual. It went Brennan, then
Specialist Frank eck Roede, then Sergeant Gay Gadolo, then sal.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Sun was down, but the moon was big, and that
moon really does make a just a huge amount of
difference in what you can and can't see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
They hadn't gone very far when out of nowhere all
hell broke loose.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
I've never seen before or since anything like what what happened.
It was basically I don't know the number of shots.
Absolutely everything, every single inch of the air in front
of us, behind us was filled with tracers.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
They had walked into an ambush. The enemy had arranged
themselves in an L shaped barrier. One short line of
soldiers directly in front of first platoon, and a longer
line along their left flank. It's a classic tactic meant
to create the most carnage and the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You really can't protect yourself from an ambush like that.
You just hope you don't walk into it. But the
way the train dictated, there was only one way we
could go down.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
What happened next was total chaos. More tracers than there
were stars in the sky, the sound of bullets coming
from extremely close range.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Within the first five seconds, so I think pretty much
everyone had been shot somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The Americans were standing in the open and the enemy
was behind the rocks and trees. Essentially there was no cover.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
A few shrubs and bushes, but there's nothing that's gonna
stop a bullet.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Sal got shot in the rib cage. Fortunately the impact
was absorbed by his protective vest. Another bullet went through
the assault pack that was over his shoulder, shattering the
weapon there. They had been in regular contact with enemy
fighters almost daily over the past six months, but this
was different, way more intense. Thousands of bullets ripped the
(19:28):
air from both sides. Then Sal saw guy out of
the get hit.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So I looked towards my leader, sar uncl Ardo, and
I just saw his head twitch and it wasn't like
what was that twitch? It was like something just hit
his head twitch and he dropped.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sal's heart sank. He knew what that kind of head
twitch meant. He ran to Guyautlo through the bullets. When
he reached him, he saw immediately Guy Outada was alive.
The bullet had only grazed his skull. Guy Gadado scrambled
to his feet and he and Sal ran back and
(20:12):
jumped into a shallow ditch. They threw grenades, using the
explosions as covered to run forward, shooting at the enemy line.
Flashes of fire answered back from the trees. They threw
their grenades again, charging ahead, moving up towards ek Road
and Brennan. Finally they got to Ekro. He had been
(20:34):
shot twice in the leg, but he kept returning fire
until his gun had jammed.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
When we went up, we saw that Croad and Nechrow
was on the ground and he said he'd been shot,
and he said that Brenna said he was shot as well,
and he's somewhere up ahead. I can hear this.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
As I'm running, sal knew Ekroed had Guyautao with him
dressing his wound. He would be safe. There was nobody
better than Gay.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Gottivo, and so I just kept on running, and I
thrown all my grenades. I only had three with me,
and there was no more grenades, and I was already
running forward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It was up to him to find his friend Brennan.
He knew Brennan was in danger, but he seemed to
have disappeared.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And when I ran up and I couldn't. I couldn't
find Brennan where he should have been. My just cut
to the left and I just started going closer to
the shooting. I cleared through some there was some low shrubs,
and I was just running. I wasn't shooting. I was running,
and I came out this part hungs my dreams.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Suddenly it got quieter, and that's when he saw two
people moving away away from him, carrying something.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It's crazy. I don't know how anyone else got up
here before me. I mean, this all happens like this,
and the moon's full and so you can see, you
can see very well, but I can't understand what is
going on in front of me. It's I got a
little bit closer, I realized what was going on. I
(22:24):
looked back, and it's just this side of a mountain
in Afghanistan, and it's almost This is a perfectly clear patch,
and the moon couldn't have been any more beautiful, and
life couldn't have been any scarier.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Then Sal understood he was looking at two enemy soldiers,
and that thing between them was a person tied by
his hands and feet.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Brandon, He's smarter than me, stronger than me, he's faster
than me. He's a better shot than me, and that's
who's getting carried away.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Sal shot one of the insurgents and killed him. He
dropped on the spot. Then he hit the other one,
who limped away and disappeared down the cliff side. Sal
ran to Josh Brennan.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I grabbed Brennan, and I just turned around and ran
as fast as I could back the way I just
came from.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
He dragged Brennan to cover, hearing the bullets continued to
pop and zing around him, and then once they were
in a safer spot, he was able to look closely
at his friend. He had multiple gunshot wounds the bottom
left side of his jaw, was gone.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I tried to see what's wrong with Brennan, and he's moaning,
and he wasn't doing so good. But he was alive.
He was still talking and I think he was shot
probably about seven times, and it looked like maybe an
REPG burst up on the ground, shrapnel to his face
and took his a good portion of his jaw. The
(24:05):
just complaining that he had something in his mouth, but
it wasn't that he had something in his mouth, and
he says didn't have his mouth.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Sal started calling for medical help. None came. Where was Mendoza.
Then the entire ridge began to shake. An American b
one was dropping bombs. There had been bombers and Apache
helicopters buzzing overhead, and now the enemy and first platoon
(24:34):
were separated enough that they could finally fire. All that time,
Sal waited with Brennan, trying to stop the bleeding, talking
to him about home, trying to comfort him. Keep him alive.
You'll be okay, he told them, You'll get to tell
(24:56):
your hero stories. Brennan smiled. Eventually a metic arrived. It
wasn't Mendoza. Sal wasn't sure where Mendoza was. Sal stayed
with Brennan until he was loaded onto that Medovac helicopter.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
He took him away, and hey, Brennan was still with
it when you left, and his heart rate was low,
but it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Over All Sal could do was pick up his gear
and hiked the hours back through the valley to the
Corngall outpost. As he went, he played the day over
and over again in his head, thinking about what he
could have done differently, holding out a desperate hope that
(25:43):
Brennan would survive. Many hours after that brutal firefight, Sao
(26:06):
was back at base, still holding out hope, and then
he heard the news his friend Josh Brennan had passed
away after surgery. Mendoza had been shot in the femeral
artery early in the ambush. He bled out in a
ditch and died. Three other men had been airlifted out
(26:26):
with injuries.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
That was bucked Ober twenty six, two thousand and seven.
But still, uh, I feel like such a baby. But
to me, that was my that was my hell, that
was my bad day.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Josh Brennan wasn't just a fellow soldier. He was SAO's
closest friend, the one he had fought side by side
with As Sal was reeling from what had happened, his girlfriend,
Jim was thousands of miles away getting bits and pieces
of information. I got a.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Phone call from one of my friends and other army spouse,
and she was frantic. She was crying. She told me
that Brandon died, and she told me that Sal was
a hero and that she didn't know when I was
going to hear from him. And I heard from him,
(27:28):
I think the next the next day or two, he
called and I could tell that he wasn't doing well.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Back in Iowa. Sal's parents, Rosemary and Steven, got a
call as well. Their stoic son never wanted to tell
them what he had seen or done. This was no different.
He didn't want to talk about what happened that night,
but a mom knows when to push. Sal's mom shared
(27:59):
that moment and a tribute video.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
I got the phone call and he was crying, he
was upset, and I said, can you tell me about it?
And he said it very strong. He says, I will
tell you once and I won't tell you again, and
don't ask any questions.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
The hardest phone call he had to make was the
one he made with Eric Gayadbo. The two of them
called Josh Brennan's father. Sal wanted Josh's dad to know
how much Brennan had meant to him. He was crying
so hard it was difficult to speak, and after all
(28:40):
those calls he had to make sense of what happened
for himself.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
The strongest metals are forged in the hottest fires, and
our hottest fire was the Corngall Valley, and that bonded
us together in a way that cannot be broken.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It was true, but it wasn't much comfort. What was
worse was to talk about what he'd done. A few
days after the ambush, Guyadolo came to talk to Sal.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You said, you're gonna get put in for a middle.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Of honor whatever. Guy out of the thought Sal's reaction
would be. He had to be surprised by what it
actually was.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I was pissed. You're gonna congratulate me, You're gonna pat
me on the back and say thanks. Stupid. You're absolutely
stupid if you think this is a good idea.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
But the men of first Platoon were brothers, and just
as Sal had their backs, they had his. Eric Guayadlo
remembers the long conversations he had with Sal, trying to
help him make sense of the honor that might be
coming his way.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Me and him plenty of nights.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You know, Jay, I don't want this.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
You know.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
I didn't do anything more than the rest of you.
You know, I went out there because Josh was my friend.
I went out there and save my friend. He would
have done the same exact thing for me.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Eric was trying to get him to see his actions
for what they were, acts of courage of heroism.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
And I told Sal, I was like, I noticed, how
I know? Wait what you don't understand? What you did
was pretty crazy. You know, you single handley stopped the fight.
You stopped them from taking a soldier.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But Sal didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
We all did what we felt we were supposed to
do because that's how we were trained. No one did
anything special. Every single one of us were fighting for
our absolute life.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Sal was supposed to be said back to Italy on
November third, two thousand and seven, but due to his
contract getting extended, he didn't leave Afghanistan until July of
two thousand and eight. When he got back to Italy,
Jen was waiting for him, so were nightmares. PTSD. The
(31:10):
effects of being shot at constantly for fifteen months were
not easy to shake. Sal tried not to talk about
the events of October twenty fifth. Doing so made him
feel sick and terrible, so he just didn't. He took
a desk job, relieved to be off of the front lines.
(31:34):
He and Jen got engaged in July of two thousand
and nine and married the following year. Life was quiet
and Sal was happier, And then came that phone call
in his office, the voice of the President on the line.
Sal would have to finally come to terms with that
day and do it in the public eye. Within a
(32:01):
few months of that call, Sal Junta was at the
White House for his Medal of Honor ceremony. Nearly fifty
soldiers who had served with him in Italy and Afghanistan
were in attendance. The families of Josh Brennan and Hugo
Mendoza were there too. Clearly everyone knew how reluctant Sao
(32:21):
was to be labeled a hero. President Barack Obama certainly did.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
He'll tell you that he didn't do anything special, that
he was just doing his job, that any of his
brothers in the unit would do the same thing. Staff
Sergeant Juna, your courage prevented the capture of an American
soldier and brought that soldier back to his family. You
may believe that you don't deserve this honor, but it
(32:49):
was your fellow soldiers who recommended you for it.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Something started to slowly shift for Sal if he couldn't
let himself take credit for so what had happened during
Rock Avalanche? What could he do with this honor? How
could he live with the version of himself that he
didn't really recognize?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
As I felt this light silk ribbon go around my neck,
I felt the weight of the sacrifices of those two men.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
So he made a decision. He would accept the medal
as a way to keep their memory alive. He would
devote himself to doing better, to being better in honor
of them.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Because if I got to do it, I'm going to
do it for them. And there's nothing they wouldn't do
for me, So how could I not do this for them.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
This is not to say that Sal feels any better
about that day in October of two thousand and seven.
He still wonders, how can I be so great if
I allowed two of my friends to get killed. But
he can live with that feeling if it means honoring
his friends. He understands that the flip side of his
(34:05):
heroism is their ultimate sacrifice. The military pulled out of
the Corangall Valley in April of twenty ten. They had
never really want anything there. Sal left the army the
following year. He went back to college, and he and
Jen are now parents of two, a girl and a boy.
(34:30):
He wrote a memoir about his experiences called Living with Honor.
We've read a lot of books by Medal of Honor
recipients and veterans in general, and let me tell you,
sALS is incredible, honest and thoughtful and funny and intense.
(34:50):
Just like Sal, It too, is a way for him
to memorialize his friends, to tell their story. This is
how Sal made peace with the Medal of Honor, the
same way he fought, by doing it for someone else.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
It stays at my house at night, put it on
my neck when I need to. But this is not mine,
This is not for me. This represents so much more.
This represents not just my boys, not just Brandan, not
just Mendoza, or not all the guys who have been wounded,
not all the people who have suffered, not the families
that will pay the price for this country. It's not
(35:31):
for any one of those people.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It's for all of those people. And it's more than that.
Sal doesn't just wear the metal for people in the
military or their families. He wears it to honor the
service of all Americans who were just doing their jobs
like he did, supporting each other and weighs big and small,
(35:55):
trying to make a difference. He wears it for all
of us. He wears it for you. Medal of Honor.
(36:22):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben
Nadaf Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.
Our executive producer is Constanza Gayardo. Fact checking by Arthur
Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips. Production support by
(36:43):
Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
We also want to hear from you. Send us your
personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Just
email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin do f
you might hear your stories on future episodes of Metal
(37:03):
of Honor or see them on our social channels at
pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Hey everyone, We've put together a survey for listeners of
Medal of Honor and we want to hear from you.
Tell us what you love about the show, what we
can improve on, or stories you think we've missed. We're
committed to making this show even better and you can
help to take the survey. Visit bit dot lee slash
mh survey. That's bit dot l y slash mh survey.
(00:27):
The link is also in our show notes below. Pushkin,
the staff sergeant, sat at his desk at the United
(00:48):
States Army base in Vicenza, Italy. It was September of
twoenty ten. His name was Salvatore Genta, and he was
waiting for a phone call. Just the thought of the
call made him queasy. He was pretty sure what the
news would be. There had been rumors about it for years,
(01:10):
rumors that he preferred not to think about. They were
too upsetting. But the day before he'd learned that the
call was definitely coming, so he asked his wife to
sit in the office with him. She watched his face
as he watched the phone. Sao was twenty five years
old and had been a member of the Army in
(01:33):
the one hundred and seventy third Airborne Brigade. For seven years.
He had seen some of the worst and most relentless
fighting in all of Afghanistan. He had been in the
Corangall Valley. The soldiers called it the Valley of Death
for good reason. It had been a nightmare. But it
(01:53):
was a nightmare that Sal had been willing to take
part in, excited even unlike this call. He wasn't excited
about this at all. And then the phone rang. Sal
took his wife's hand. He answered the phone and a
(02:14):
voice said, please hold for the President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I'm j R.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Martinez and this is Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
(02:45):
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
When Sal Junta finished that phone call with the President,
he looked up and saw it wasn't just his wife
sitting in the room. There were maybe fifty people packed
(03:09):
into an office that only had space for five deaths.
They were there because Sal, their low key, unassuming friend,
was going to be the first living Medal of Honor
recipient in almost forty years. Sal's friends, his coworkers, his wife,
(03:30):
they were all so proud. But you know who wasn't proud.
Sal Junta Sald deployed to Afghanistan for the first time
(03:53):
in two thousand and five. He was twenty, a super
gung ho dude who literally couldn't wait to get into action.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I remember when they told us we had our orders
to go to Afghansian. I remember I was, it's excited
to go to war. This is what I came to do.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
He had been trained for battle, which is exactly what
he wanted, though if you asked him just a couple
of years earlier, he wasn't sure what he wanted. Back then,
he was working as a sandwich artist at the subway
shop near his family home in Iowa.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I was about to graduate high school and I didn't
have a plan. And I heard a radio commercial come on,
and I said, come on down. See the recruiter, get
a free T shirt. I want a free T shirt.
Who doesn't want a free T shirt? I'm working at somebody.
I want a free T shirt. Of course I want
a T shirt.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was the right radio ad at exactly the right time.
Sal went to the recruiting center for the T shirt,
but he came out of it with a life plan.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
This is my chance. I can make a difference, and
I can do it everywhere, but not in Cedar Rappids, Iowa.
And at that time I was ready to go somewhere else.
The Army's gonna take me everywhere except for here. So
I'll just jump on this bandwagon and see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
He decided to join the one hundred and seventy third Airborne,
which meant he would potentially be jumping out of a
plane straight into combat and.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Eighteen years old. I don't know much, but the Army
said I could spit, I could swear, I could shoot guns,
and they'll pay him one hundred and fifty bucks extra
to jump out of planes. Patriotism slash one hundred and
fifty dollars to jump out of a plane A month.
I'm in.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
But once Sal got to Afghanistan. He realized that combat
wasn't quite what his eighteen year old self had pictured.
Sal and First Platoons spent most of their time at
Ford Operating Base. Below. It was in southern Afghanistan. It
was an isolated spot, nestled in the valley between the
(05:53):
soaring peaks of the Hindu Kush Mountains, surrounded by almond
and apricot orchard. But Below itself was like most of
the bases in Afghanistan, pretty bleak, a mud hut turned
into a makeshift fortress, guys sleeping eight to a room,
(06:14):
and constant attacks from the Taliban. Sal and the rest
of the soldiers got really close, really fast. That'll happen
when you're living in such tight quarters far from anyone else.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
You only get thirty four other people to talk to,
So you see these people seven days a week. There's
no one else you can talk to or be with.
No psychiatrists. Gets as steep as we got on the
side of the mountain. We just because we had nothing
else to.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Do, nothing to do but talk and joke and go
on patrols and get shot at, which meant watching your friends,
your brothers get hurt.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
It didn't take long into my first deployment into Afghanistan
before I really your emotions in war are a lot
different than your emotions watching war on TV. And death
is real and the hardships are painful. It's not just
painful to watch. That's truly painful on you and your boys.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Sal was still all in even after he got shot
through the leg in a firefight, but slowly his gung
ho attitude was beginning to change. About three months into
his deployment, and Id took out a humpy, killing four
soldiers and maiming a fifth. They were all members of
(07:37):
Sal's company, Company B. They were men he knew. Sal
went to the bomb site to help clean up, and
seeing the bodies was well traumatic for everyone. And just
a few days later, a different squad from bey Lowe
(07:58):
was out on patrol and one of those men, a lieutenant,
was shot and killed.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
We lost one of our lieutenants. And now that's five
in like a span of a week. And I was
already having a tough time kind of stomach and what
happened to the first four and my team years sent
me down. He goes, this is it. This is exactly
what war is. It's not going to get any better.
And that was when I truly felt that I was
in the army. I was an emotional, hurt, straught alone paying,
(08:31):
which I hadn't felt before. Three months into Afghanistan, I
was no longer excited. I had more of a zest
than ever to do my job. But it wasn't because
I was excited to do it. It was because this
is what we trained to do, and all the excitement
was gone.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Sal made it through the rest of that deployment, fighting
and sustaining and doing his job, and after a year
he returned to the base in Italy. Finally he would
have a break from combat, and even better, he'd get
to see his girlfriend, Jennifer Mueller. They had met at
(09:12):
the very start of Sal's time in Italy before he
deployed to Afghanistan. Back then, she was a student from
the University of Iowa doing a semester abroad. Now Jen
had graduated and moved to an apartment near the base.
The two were happy, thinking about the future, and then
(09:34):
Sal got the news Company B was returning to Afghanistan.
Sal's attention shifted from his future a future with Jen,
back to his buddies in first Platoon. That brotherhood of soldiers.
He knew he had to be his best for them,
and his best was going to have to be pretty great,
(09:58):
because soon enough the Company B was on their way
to the Corngau Valley. When sal arrived in the Corangaul
Valley in May of two thousand and seven, he knew
(10:21):
immediately that this deployment would be different.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
It was like nothing that I had never seen in
Afghanistan before.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
The valley itself looked lush and green, beautiful, even peaceful.
It wasn't.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It was all so harsh terrain. Even the little bushes
were sharp, all the little animals bit or stung or
poisoned in some way.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
The steep hillsides were covered in dense brush, which provided
the ideal hiding spots for insurgents, and they were well
armed and itching for a fight.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
We were at the bottom of a valley with mountains
just cheer straight, straight up and down on every single side,
and every single place you're going to fight, you are
at the bottom and they are at the top, and
you are open and they are covered.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
There was literally no safe place to be an American
in the Corngall Valley. The roughly thirty five men of
Sal's platoon lived at fire Base Vegas. It was a
mud hut about the size of a three car garage,
no running water, spotty electricity, and very little protection from
constant enemy fire. For a shower, a hot meal, or
(11:41):
a phone call home, the guys would have to go
all the way back to the main base corn Gall outpost.
It was a multi hour walk where they'd be shot
at all the way, so they didn't go that often,
which meant Sal couldn't talk to Jen very much.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
She remembers it well, I remember the two months for
I heard from him, and then it was every month,
and when you get a phone call, it's fifteen minutes.
When a month or two goes by fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Is like a second. But at least Sal was there
with people he adored, the guys he thought of as family.
One was Josh Brennan, who'd been a football player back
in high school in Oregon. He was all endurance and toughness,
though he also had a way of making everyone around
him feel at ease. He was alpha team leader and
(12:31):
Sal was Bravo team leader.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I'd been with Brennan for maybe four years, and four
years with roughly thirty five guys. So in the Army
everyone gets to be your buddy and you'll love him
like a brother, because that's how it's set up.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Sergeant Eric Ga Yadado was their squad leader, smart and
cool headed, a perfectionist, and a brilliant fighter. Their medic
was Hugo Mendoza. At twenty nine, he was a decade
older than many of the guys at Vegas. He was
from Texas and had joined the Army to take care
(13:07):
of people as a first responder. Brennan, Gayadro, Sal and
Mendoza were really close, but still it was hard. The
men had to wear helmets and body armor all the time.
They'd risk getting shot at, even going to the latrines.
(13:27):
They would hike out for daily patrols, and each one
was slow and hard up steep trails covered in loose shale.
One wrong step and you could fall to your death.
Sal felt his body start to fall apart from the
lack of sleep and the stress of non stop fighting.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
We get shot at every single day, sometimes multiple times
a day.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
And then in late October of two thousand and seven,
the men were told were going on a new kind
of combat mission. They called it Rock Avalanche. It was
going to be the most ambitious operation the Corngall Valley
had seen, deploying four separate companies at the same time,
(14:13):
some four hundred men along with their support. The goal
was to move directly into Taliban strongholds. They'd look for
weapons and try to shut down travel routes for the insurgents.
Rock Avalanche would begin the night of October nineteenth. That night,
for the first time, Sal heard his captain wish them luck,
(14:36):
and he knew that meant they needed.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Rock Avalanche took us to where the bad guys were.
That was our job.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Sal's company went to the southwestern part of the valley,
traveling by helicopter. Their destination was a Taliban stronghold through
which weapons and money flowed in and out of the
Corngall Valley. It was like striking at the head of
the snake.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
We got in some contact for a couple times each day,
you know, maybe four or five gun fights, usually small
arms RPGs.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
And then on October twenty third, three men from Company
B were shot, one fatally. So in the very week
hours of the twenty fifth, Sal and the rest of
first Platoon went to support Second Platoon, which was going
to a village near the shooting. In the four days
(15:32):
of the mission, the men had slept fewer than ten
hours total. First platoon marched for two or three hours
until they reached their assigned position around five a m.
It was a spot called Hancho Hill. They would stay
there while second platoon worked its way through the village
trying to get information about what had happened at the shooting.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Second latoon was going to go into the village, and
then we were going to be on one of the
side weeks over watching the village so if anything anyone
started coming from the outside to come and attack them
in the village, we already have the high ground.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Sal's platoon, that's first platoon, stayed there all day, not
talking much, trying to keep vigilant, knowing that the insurgents
were close.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And we sat there twelve hours, fourteen hours, just watching
and waiting, and the whole time we're thinking, okay, somewhere here,
there should be somewhere down here.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
What they didn't realize was that a group of at
least a dozen enemy fighters had crept up behind them
and were waiting patiently for First Platoon to start moving
back towards Corungall outpost. There was only one path they
could take.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
The sun went down, the commander said we're going to
pull out. We'll go back. There was probably a two
and a half hour walk back to the Corngall outpost.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
There were eighteen men from first Platoon walking in single file.
Sergeant Brennan was out in front. He shouldn't even have
been there. His time in Afghanistan had been up a
month earlier, but his contract had been extended. That was
very common at this point in the war, so there
(17:20):
he was walking point as usual. It went Brennan, then
Specialist Frank eck Roede, then Sergeant Gay Gadolo, then sal.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Sun was down, but the moon was big, and that
moon really does make a just a huge amount of
difference in what you can and can't see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
They hadn't gone very far when out of nowhere all
hell broke loose.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
I've never seen before or since anything like what what happened.
It was basically I don't know the number of shots.
Absolutely everything, every single inch of the air in front
of us, behind us was filled with tracers.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
They had walked into an ambush. The enemy had arranged
themselves in an L shaped barrier. One short line of
soldiers directly in front of first platoon, and a longer
line along their left flank. It's a classic tactic meant
to create the most carnage and the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You really can't protect yourself from an ambush like that.
You just hope you don't walk into it. But the
way the train dictated, there was only one way we
could go down.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
What happened next was total chaos. More tracers than there
were stars in the sky, the sound of bullets coming
from extremely close range.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Within the first five seconds, so I think pretty much
everyone had been shot somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
The Americans were standing in the open and the enemy
was behind the rocks and trees. Essentially there was no cover.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
A few shrubs and bushes, but there's nothing that's gonna
stop a bullet.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Sal got shot in the rib cage. Fortunately the impact
was absorbed by his protective vest. Another bullet went through
the assault pack that was over his shoulder, shattering the
weapon there. They had been in regular contact with enemy
fighters almost daily over the past six months, but this
was different, way more intense. Thousands of bullets ripped the
(19:28):
air from both sides. Then Sal saw guy out of
the get hit.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So I looked towards my leader, sar uncl Ardo, and
I just saw his head twitch and it wasn't like
what was that twitch? It was like something just hit
his head twitch and he dropped.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Sal's heart sank. He knew what that kind of head
twitch meant. He ran to Guyautlo through the bullets. When
he reached him, he saw immediately Guy Outada was alive.
The bullet had only grazed his skull. Guy Gadado scrambled
to his feet and he and Sal ran back and
(20:12):
jumped into a shallow ditch. They threw grenades, using the
explosions as covered to run forward, shooting at the enemy line.
Flashes of fire answered back from the trees. They threw
their grenades again, charging ahead, moving up towards ek Road
and Brennan. Finally they got to Ekro. He had been
(20:34):
shot twice in the leg, but he kept returning fire
until his gun had jammed.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
When we went up, we saw that Croad and Nechrow
was on the ground and he said he'd been shot,
and he said that Brenna said he was shot as well,
and he's somewhere up ahead. I can hear this.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
As I'm running, sal knew Ekroed had Guyautao with him
dressing his wound. He would be safe. There was nobody
better than Gay.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Gottivo, and so I just kept on running, and I
thrown all my grenades. I only had three with me,
and there was no more grenades, and I was already
running forward.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It was up to him to find his friend Brennan.
He knew Brennan was in danger, but he seemed to
have disappeared.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And when I ran up and I couldn't. I couldn't
find Brennan where he should have been. My just cut
to the left and I just started going closer to
the shooting. I cleared through some there was some low shrubs,
and I was just running. I wasn't shooting. I was running,
and I came out this part hungs my dreams.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Suddenly it got quieter, and that's when he saw two
people moving away away from him, carrying something.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It's crazy. I don't know how anyone else got up
here before me. I mean, this all happens like this,
and the moon's full and so you can see, you
can see very well, but I can't understand what is
going on in front of me. It's I got a
little bit closer, I realized what was going on. I
(22:24):
looked back, and it's just this side of a mountain
in Afghanistan, and it's almost This is a perfectly clear patch,
and the moon couldn't have been any more beautiful, and
life couldn't have been any scarier.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Then Sal understood he was looking at two enemy soldiers,
and that thing between them was a person tied by
his hands and feet.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Brandon, He's smarter than me, stronger than me, he's faster
than me. He's a better shot than me, and that's
who's getting carried away.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Sal shot one of the insurgents and killed him. He
dropped on the spot. Then he hit the other one,
who limped away and disappeared down the cliff side. Sal
ran to Josh Brennan.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
I grabbed Brennan, and I just turned around and ran
as fast as I could back the way I just
came from.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
He dragged Brennan to cover, hearing the bullets continued to
pop and zing around him, and then once they were
in a safer spot, he was able to look closely
at his friend. He had multiple gunshot wounds the bottom
left side of his jaw, was gone.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I tried to see what's wrong with Brennan, and he's moaning,
and he wasn't doing so good. But he was alive.
He was still talking and I think he was shot
probably about seven times, and it looked like maybe an
REPG burst up on the ground, shrapnel to his face
and took his a good portion of his jaw. The
(24:05):
just complaining that he had something in his mouth, but
it wasn't that he had something in his mouth, and
he says didn't have his mouth.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Sal started calling for medical help. None came. Where was Mendoza.
Then the entire ridge began to shake. An American b
one was dropping bombs. There had been bombers and Apache
helicopters buzzing overhead, and now the enemy and first platoon
(24:34):
were separated enough that they could finally fire. All that time,
Sal waited with Brennan, trying to stop the bleeding, talking
to him about home, trying to comfort him. Keep him alive.
You'll be okay, he told them, You'll get to tell
(24:56):
your hero stories. Brennan smiled. Eventually a metic arrived. It
wasn't Mendoza. Sal wasn't sure where Mendoza was. Sal stayed
with Brennan until he was loaded onto that Medovac helicopter.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
He took him away, and hey, Brennan was still with
it when you left, and his heart rate was low,
but it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Over All Sal could do was pick up his gear
and hiked the hours back through the valley to the
Corngall outpost. As he went, he played the day over
and over again in his head, thinking about what he
could have done differently, holding out a desperate hope that
(25:43):
Brennan would survive. Many hours after that brutal firefight, Sao
(26:06):
was back at base, still holding out hope, and then
he heard the news his friend Josh Brennan had passed
away after surgery. Mendoza had been shot in the femeral
artery early in the ambush. He bled out in a
ditch and died. Three other men had been airlifted out
(26:26):
with injuries.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
That was bucked Ober twenty six, two thousand and seven.
But still, uh, I feel like such a baby. But
to me, that was my that was my hell, that
was my bad day.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Josh Brennan wasn't just a fellow soldier. He was SAO's
closest friend, the one he had fought side by side
with As Sal was reeling from what had happened, his girlfriend,
Jim was thousands of miles away getting bits and pieces
of information. I got a.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Phone call from one of my friends and other army spouse,
and she was frantic. She was crying. She told me
that Brandon died, and she told me that Sal was
a hero and that she didn't know when I was
going to hear from him. And I heard from him,
(27:28):
I think the next the next day or two, he
called and I could tell that he wasn't doing well.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Back in Iowa. Sal's parents, Rosemary and Steven, got a
call as well. Their stoic son never wanted to tell
them what he had seen or done. This was no different.
He didn't want to talk about what happened that night,
but a mom knows when to push. Sal's mom shared
(27:59):
that moment and a tribute video.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
I got the phone call and he was crying, he
was upset, and I said, can you tell me about it?
And he said it very strong. He says, I will
tell you once and I won't tell you again, and
don't ask any questions.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
The hardest phone call he had to make was the
one he made with Eric Gayadbo. The two of them
called Josh Brennan's father. Sal wanted Josh's dad to know
how much Brennan had meant to him. He was crying
so hard it was difficult to speak, and after all
(28:40):
those calls he had to make sense of what happened
for himself.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
The strongest metals are forged in the hottest fires, and
our hottest fire was the Corngall Valley, and that bonded
us together in a way that cannot be broken.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
It was true, but it wasn't much comfort. What was
worse was to talk about what he'd done. A few
days after the ambush, Guyadolo came to talk to Sal.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
You said, you're gonna get put in for a middle.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Of honor whatever. Guy out of the thought Sal's reaction
would be. He had to be surprised by what it
actually was.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I was pissed. You're gonna congratulate me, You're gonna pat
me on the back and say thanks. Stupid. You're absolutely
stupid if you think this is a good idea.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
But the men of first Platoon were brothers, and just
as Sal had their backs, they had his. Eric Guayadlo
remembers the long conversations he had with Sal, trying to
help him make sense of the honor that might be
coming his way.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
Me and him plenty of nights.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
You know, Jay, I don't want this.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
You know.
Speaker 5 (29:58):
I didn't do anything more than the rest of you.
You know, I went out there because Josh was my friend.
I went out there and save my friend. He would
have done the same exact thing for me.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Eric was trying to get him to see his actions
for what they were, acts of courage of heroism.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
And I told Sal, I was like, I noticed, how
I know? Wait what you don't understand? What you did
was pretty crazy. You know, you single handley stopped the fight.
You stopped them from taking a soldier.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But Sal didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
We all did what we felt we were supposed to
do because that's how we were trained. No one did
anything special. Every single one of us were fighting for
our absolute life.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Sal was supposed to be said back to Italy on
November third, two thousand and seven, but due to his
contract getting extended, he didn't leave Afghanistan until July of
two thousand and eight. When he got back to Italy,
Jen was waiting for him, so were nightmares. PTSD. The
(31:10):
effects of being shot at constantly for fifteen months were
not easy to shake. Sal tried not to talk about
the events of October twenty fifth. Doing so made him
feel sick and terrible, so he just didn't. He took
a desk job, relieved to be off of the front lines.
(31:34):
He and Jen got engaged in July of two thousand
and nine and married the following year. Life was quiet
and Sal was happier, And then came that phone call
in his office, the voice of the President on the line.
Sal would have to finally come to terms with that
day and do it in the public eye. Within a
(32:01):
few months of that call, Sal Junta was at the
White House for his Medal of Honor ceremony. Nearly fifty
soldiers who had served with him in Italy and Afghanistan
were in attendance. The families of Josh Brennan and Hugo
Mendoza were there too. Clearly everyone knew how reluctant Sao
(32:21):
was to be labeled a hero. President Barack Obama certainly did.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
He'll tell you that he didn't do anything special, that
he was just doing his job, that any of his
brothers in the unit would do the same thing. Staff
Sergeant Juna, your courage prevented the capture of an American
soldier and brought that soldier back to his family. You
may believe that you don't deserve this honor, but it
(32:49):
was your fellow soldiers who recommended you for it.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Something started to slowly shift for Sal if he couldn't
let himself take credit for so what had happened during
Rock Avalanche? What could he do with this honor? How
could he live with the version of himself that he
didn't really recognize?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
As I felt this light silk ribbon go around my neck,
I felt the weight of the sacrifices of those two men.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
So he made a decision. He would accept the medal
as a way to keep their memory alive. He would
devote himself to doing better, to being better in honor
of them.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Because if I got to do it, I'm going to
do it for them. And there's nothing they wouldn't do
for me, So how could I not do this for them.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
This is not to say that Sal feels any better
about that day in October of two thousand and seven.
He still wonders, how can I be so great if
I allowed two of my friends to get killed. But
he can live with that feeling if it means honoring
his friends. He understands that the flip side of his
(34:05):
heroism is their ultimate sacrifice. The military pulled out of
the Corangall Valley in April of twenty ten. They had
never really want anything there. Sal left the army the
following year. He went back to college, and he and
Jen are now parents of two, a girl and a boy.
(34:30):
He wrote a memoir about his experiences called Living with Honor.
We've read a lot of books by Medal of Honor
recipients and veterans in general, and let me tell you,
sALS is incredible, honest and thoughtful and funny and intense.
(34:50):
Just like Sal, It too, is a way for him
to memorialize his friends, to tell their story. This is
how Sal made peace with the Medal of Honor, the
same way he fought, by doing it for someone else.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
It stays at my house at night, put it on
my neck when I need to. But this is not mine,
This is not for me. This represents so much more.
This represents not just my boys, not just Brandan, not
just Mendoza, or not all the guys who have been wounded,
not all the people who have suffered, not the families
that will pay the price for this country. It's not
(35:31):
for any one of those people.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It's for all of those people. And it's more than that.
Sal doesn't just wear the metal for people in the
military or their families. He wears it to honor the
service of all Americans who were just doing their jobs
like he did, supporting each other and weighs big and small,
(35:55):
trying to make a difference. He wears it for all
of us. He wears it for you. Medal of Honor.
(36:22):
Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane. Our editor is Ben
Nadaf Hoffrey. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.
Our executive producer is Constanza Gayardo. Fact checking by Arthur
Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips. Production support by
(36:43):
Suzanne Gabber. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
We also want to hear from you. Send us your
personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Just
email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin do f
you might hear your stories on future episodes of Metal
(37:03):
of Honor or see them on our social channels at
pushkin Pods. I'm your host, JR. Martinez
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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