[♪sustained note♪]
[female speaker] 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."
So Steve grabbed the other phone, and we listened to what had happened that day.
[♪♪]
We were on a large battalion operation
where we were pretty much the main effort.
It was one of those nights where it wasn't totally dark,
but it was getting dark.
The terrain was such a case where we had to walk pretty much ducks in a row.
There were times we were on all fours,
on our hands and knees crawling up the terrain,
trying to get into position.
We knew they wanted to fight. We knew we were in uncharted territory,
somewhere we hadn't been.
Sergeant Brennan, my team leader, he got probably 10 to 15 meters into the clearing
and we heard what appeared to be a pop shot at the time.
It was just a single shot.
Probably about a half second or second later--it didn't even take long--
the whole 12 opened up on us.
1st Platoon, being the lead platoon out, walked right into an L-shaped ambush,
so close that the assets flying above
couldn't distinguish between who was bad and who was good.
I remember our squad leader, he had taken a bullet right through his helmet.
It just barely grazed the skin.
[Eckrode] I got shot in the stomach, and then I also heard my team leader,
Sergeant Brennan, say that he had been hit.
There were RPGs, PKMs.
[Eckrode] I took a round in the helmet and got shot in the leg.
Everybody in that first squad was just shot.
Sergeant Giunta sees these guys getting hit in front of him
and immediately starts bounding up to their positions
after being shot twice in the chest.
He ran past us.
I didn't know where he went. I didn't know why he went.
He fought through the initial wall of lead.
We were dragging Sergeant Brennan away at that point.
[Kearney] He ran through the ambush, engaged three individuals
that were running off with Sergeant Brennan's body.
They were trying to grab his friend, and he ran out there and he went after them,
and it made perfect sense why he did that.
From what we know, he killed at least one of the enemy,
grabbed Sergeant Brennan, made sure that he was okay,
and then dragged him back over to the rest of the platoon
that's still being engaged in combat with the enemy.
[♪mellow music♪] When I talked to Sergeant Giunta one-on-one later on,
it was more or less like, "Hey, man, I don't know how you did it, but why did you do it?"
He was saying it through anger and through lots of sadness.
You could tell at the moment that he was telling us
he was actually reliving it.
[Giunta] I saw two people carrying one person, kind of by the hands and by the feet.
But as I ran closer, I kind of realized more what was actually going on,
and it was two ACM carrying Sergeant Brennan.
So I just started shooting.
I mean, that's what we do.
[♪♪] And I grabbed Sergeant Brennan and dragged him back a little bit,
but he was still alive and he was talking.
He just was talking about how his face hurt and he was shot in his legs
and he was shot in his arms.
I just tried to reassure him, "Everything is going to be okay. Everything's fine."
The foundation of this family, this tight-knit group that was forged together
in the blast furnace of combat,
he felt like any number of those guys would have done the same thing for him.
I didn't run on to do anything heroic.
I ran on to go fight next to my brother, to go fight next to my friend
who I already served one tour in Afghanistan with,
who we lived in the same barracks building for the last four years.
And he probably would have felt worse if he hadn't done it.
And he did, having to go through there and live through that painstaking event
and see his friend basically die.
[R. Giunta] They took Josh up in the helicopter, and then they had a long walk back.
And I don't know if it was when they got back or the following day
they were told that they lost Josh.
And what Sal had told us on that phone call, he says,
"He was alive, Mom. When they took him up, he was alive."
"I expected to find him alive when I got back."
And that was hard for him.
We've not talked to him again about that day.
We vowed that we wouldn't, we wouldn't ask him questions.
We have his version that he told us through the tears and the emotions,
and then we hear the news through everybody else what that looked like.
It started sounding like some story I had heard about or read about in World War I
or World War II with Audie Murphy.
You don't hear about single individuals taking on the responsibility
to lead their squad when they're a specialist,
treat their squad leader after they've been shot three times,
and then third, go repatriate their best friend from behind enemy lines
that's being dragged away by the enemy
and then to run back into the kill zone to start treating his men.
I've never heard of anybody doing that on their own.
[Izell] I wouldn't say we were heroes. I would say definitely he was.
I would definitely say he was a hero that night.
No matter what happens, for the rest of my life I'll always know
that I was around the great ones.
[Giunta] I remember the friends I lost every day, regardless of any medal.
That medal puts me in a position where I'm able to tell the world
about how great Sergeant Brennan and Specialist Mendoza are
and to tell the story of the men that are around me.
He is a low-key guy, a humble guy,
and he doesn't seek the limelight.
And 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.
All these spotlights right now are on me,
but I wasn't the only one there that night.
I've never gone to battle alone. I've never been in a gunfight alone.
That's why Salvatore Giunta risked his life for his fellow soldiers,
because they would risk their lives for him.
That's what fueled his bravery,
just the urgent impulse to have their backs
but the absolute confidence that they had his.
I hope with all these years I can make that apparent to the world,
that these people go out there and do this every single day,
year after year, deployment after deployment
and it's taxing, but there are that great of people in our country
willing to do this.
And I hope that if I've got the spotlights on me, that I can show the world
that there are amazing people out there.
[applause]
[♪upbeat music♪]