Reply With QuoteA due award.
A shame so many MOH's are posthumus.
Please take time out of your day on this date to honor this fallen hero and his family.
Navy Times
October 11, 2007
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
(EXCERPT)
SAN DIEGO — Two years after his death in a harrowing firefight on an Afghanistan mountaintop, Lt. Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL officer from Long Island, N.Y., will be bestowed with the nation’s highest combat honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, Navy officials said.
Lt. Ligia Cohen, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon, confirmed the award.
The announcement of the Medal of Honor — the first awarded to a Navy officer or sailor for combat actions in Iraq or Afghanistan — came Thursday during a White House briefing.
The medal will be presented to MurphyÂ’s family during a 2:30 p.m. ceremony Oct. 22 at the White House, Cohen said. In addition, the late officer will be honored at two other events: the inclusion of his name on a wall at the Pentagon Hall of Heroes at 11 a.m. Oct. 23, and the presentation of the Medal of Honor flag at the Navy Memorial at 6 p.m. Oct. 23.
Murphy, 29, was leading a four-man observation team in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains when they were spotted by Taliban fighters on June 28, 2005. During the intense battle, Murphy and two of his men — Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class (SEAL) Danny Dietz and Sonar Technician 2nd Class (SEAL) Matthew Axelson — were killed, and a fourth man, former Special Warfare Operator 1st Class (SEAL) Marcus Luttrell, was seriously wounded but managed to escape. Luttrell was rescued days later.
Murphy, known as “Mikey” to his friends and family, shot and wounded, managed to crawl onto a ridgeline and radio headquarters at the nearby air base for them to send in reinforcements. Taliban fighters were closing in on the team’s position, shooting their weapons and firing rocket-propelled grenades.
“Mikey was ignoring his wound and fighting like a SEAL officer should, uncompromising, steady, hard-eyed, and professional,” Luttrell wrote in his recently published book, Lone Survivor, about his military experiences, his team and the events of that day and the deaths of his teammates, his friends.
The fighting grew more intense, but the team pressed on in the close-quarters battle. At one point, Luttrell wrote, Murphy took his mobile phone, “walked to open ground. He walked until he was more or less in the center, gunfire all around him, and he sat on a small rock and began punching in the numbers to HQ.”
“I could hear him talking,” Luttrell wrote. “ ‘My men are taking heavy fire ... we’re getting picked apart. My guys are dying out here ... we need help.’
“And right then Mikey took a bullet straight in the back. I saw the blood spurt from his chest. He slumped forward, dropping his phone and his rifle. But then he braced himself, grabbed them both, sat upright again, and once more put the phone to his ear.
“ ‘Roger that, sir. Thank you,’ ” Luttrell heard Murphy say, before the lieutenant continued to train fire on the enemy fighters.
“Only I knew what Mikey had done. He’d understood we had only one realistic chance, and that was to call in help,” Luttrell wrote. “Knowing the risk, understanding the danger, in the full knowledge the phone call could cost him his life, Lieutenant Michael Patrick Murphy, son of Maureen, fiancé of the beautiful Heather, walked out into the firestorm.
“His objective was clear: to make one last valiant attempt to save his two teammates,” he wrote.
A due award.
A shame so many MOH's are posthumus.
It takes the ultimate sacrifice for an Honor like that.
Read Luttrells book Lone Survivor it's the most riveting book I've ever read.
Murphy exposed himself to certain death in the slimest of hopes that could save his men who were all all ready shot to hell.
God Bless them all.
Thank you Lt. Michael Murphy for giving it all.
He paid the ultimate price for our country and his men. My family thanks Michael Murphy and his men and all of the troops for the efforts in keeping our country free.
Odd that the New York Times will give a left wing anti soldier group like moveon.org (also self proclaimed "owner" of the democrat party) a massive discount on a smear add of an active duity military man but not print a word about this honorable soldier and the sacrifice he made.
Pretty much summs how those assholes feel.
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