Loki
May 24th, 2008, 09:35 AM
A True Hero! (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08145/884523-85.stm)
Clarion soldier to get Medal of Honor
19-year-old threw himself on grenade to save comrades
Saturday, May 24, 2008
By Milan Simonich, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ross McGinnis, a Clarion County soldier who saved the lives of four unit mates by smothering a grenade with his body, will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor on June 2.
President Bush's staff announced the award, America's highest military honor, yesterday afternoon. With it, the White House set the tone for this Memorial Day weekend, which honors those who have died in military service.
At 19, Spc. McGinnis was the youngest man in his combat team in Iraq and one of the least imposing physically. The Army listed him at 6 feet tall and only 136 pounds, but his desire to protect the soldiers he served with has seldom been matched in military history.
His parents, Tom and Romayne McGinnis, who will accept the Medal of Honor from President Bush in a White House ceremony, say friendship motivated their son to cover the grenade instead of saving himself.
"The lives of four men who were his Army brothers outweighed the value of his one life," Tom McGinnis once wrote in describing his son's heroism. "It was just a matter of simple kindergarten arithmetic. Four means more than one."
In an interview, he described his son as a bright boy with a penchant for finding trouble. Expelled from school and placed on probation in the juvenile justice system at age 14, Spc. McGinnis foundered during his early teenage years. He was transformed on his 17th birthday, when he committed to joining the Army as soon as he graduated from Keystone Junior-Senior High School in Knox.
The principal, Vicky Walters, said Spc. McGinnis, so driven to be a soldier, made sure he met all the requirements to graduate in 2005.
Once he had his diploma, the Army assigned him to a combat team in the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment based in Schweinfurt, Germany. In August 2006, his unit deployed to Iraq, where he spent the final four months of his life.
On the morning of Dec. 4, Spc. McGinnis was riding atop a Humvee, manning a 50-caliber machine gun as the truck rolled through the violent Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah.
An insurgent on a rooftop threw a grenade at the Humvee. Spc. McGinnis tried to bat it away, but the explosive dropped into the Humvee, where the other four soldiers essentially were trapped.
Spc. McGinnis shouted a warning to them, then jumped back inside the vehicle.
"An average man would have leapt out of the gunner's cupola to safety," the Army said in its official account. "McGinnis decided to stay with his crew. Unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own life ... he threw his back over the grenade."
The explosion was so powerful that it ripped through Spc. McGinnis' body armor and blew the doors off the Humvee.
He died in front of the four men he saved -- Sgt. Ian Newland, Sgt. 1st Class Cedric Thomas, Sgt. Lyle Buehler and Pfc. Sean "Doc" Lawson.
Of them, only Sgt. Newland was injured seriously. Now 27, he lives in Colorado with his wife and two children.
Tom McGinnis visited his son's post in Germany, where Spc. McGinnis was a legend long before the president announced the Medal of Honor.
"I saw an awful lot of tattoos over there with his name," Tom McGinnis said.
He has not shied away from talking about the problems his son encountered as a boy, but said he might have sounded unduly hard on his son in a story earlier this month in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"My intent was to portray Ross as an average boy who made mistakes early in his life and then surprised everybody by doing an extraordinary thing after undergoing a transformation that started with his probation and continued with his Army discipline. It's important to me to tell people that they can't count a child out because of his mistakes," Tom McGinnis said.
Spc. McGinnis will be the fifth serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began five years ago. All were killed in action.
Mrs. Walters said he will be only the second soldier from Clarion County to receive the Medal of Honor. The first was Jeremiah Z. Brown, a Union captain in the Civil War.
:ribbon: :usa: :ribbon:
Clarion soldier to get Medal of Honor
19-year-old threw himself on grenade to save comrades
Saturday, May 24, 2008
By Milan Simonich, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ross McGinnis, a Clarion County soldier who saved the lives of four unit mates by smothering a grenade with his body, will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor on June 2.
President Bush's staff announced the award, America's highest military honor, yesterday afternoon. With it, the White House set the tone for this Memorial Day weekend, which honors those who have died in military service.
At 19, Spc. McGinnis was the youngest man in his combat team in Iraq and one of the least imposing physically. The Army listed him at 6 feet tall and only 136 pounds, but his desire to protect the soldiers he served with has seldom been matched in military history.
His parents, Tom and Romayne McGinnis, who will accept the Medal of Honor from President Bush in a White House ceremony, say friendship motivated their son to cover the grenade instead of saving himself.
"The lives of four men who were his Army brothers outweighed the value of his one life," Tom McGinnis once wrote in describing his son's heroism. "It was just a matter of simple kindergarten arithmetic. Four means more than one."
In an interview, he described his son as a bright boy with a penchant for finding trouble. Expelled from school and placed on probation in the juvenile justice system at age 14, Spc. McGinnis foundered during his early teenage years. He was transformed on his 17th birthday, when he committed to joining the Army as soon as he graduated from Keystone Junior-Senior High School in Knox.
The principal, Vicky Walters, said Spc. McGinnis, so driven to be a soldier, made sure he met all the requirements to graduate in 2005.
Once he had his diploma, the Army assigned him to a combat team in the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment based in Schweinfurt, Germany. In August 2006, his unit deployed to Iraq, where he spent the final four months of his life.
On the morning of Dec. 4, Spc. McGinnis was riding atop a Humvee, manning a 50-caliber machine gun as the truck rolled through the violent Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah.
An insurgent on a rooftop threw a grenade at the Humvee. Spc. McGinnis tried to bat it away, but the explosive dropped into the Humvee, where the other four soldiers essentially were trapped.
Spc. McGinnis shouted a warning to them, then jumped back inside the vehicle.
"An average man would have leapt out of the gunner's cupola to safety," the Army said in its official account. "McGinnis decided to stay with his crew. Unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own life ... he threw his back over the grenade."
The explosion was so powerful that it ripped through Spc. McGinnis' body armor and blew the doors off the Humvee.
He died in front of the four men he saved -- Sgt. Ian Newland, Sgt. 1st Class Cedric Thomas, Sgt. Lyle Buehler and Pfc. Sean "Doc" Lawson.
Of them, only Sgt. Newland was injured seriously. Now 27, he lives in Colorado with his wife and two children.
Tom McGinnis visited his son's post in Germany, where Spc. McGinnis was a legend long before the president announced the Medal of Honor.
"I saw an awful lot of tattoos over there with his name," Tom McGinnis said.
He has not shied away from talking about the problems his son encountered as a boy, but said he might have sounded unduly hard on his son in a story earlier this month in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"My intent was to portray Ross as an average boy who made mistakes early in his life and then surprised everybody by doing an extraordinary thing after undergoing a transformation that started with his probation and continued with his Army discipline. It's important to me to tell people that they can't count a child out because of his mistakes," Tom McGinnis said.
Spc. McGinnis will be the fifth serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began five years ago. All were killed in action.
Mrs. Walters said he will be only the second soldier from Clarion County to receive the Medal of Honor. The first was Jeremiah Z. Brown, a Union captain in the Civil War.
:ribbon: :usa: :ribbon: