Living with Honor: A Memoir - Hardcover

Giunta, Salvatore; Layden, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1451691467 ISBN 13: 9781451691467

Publisher: Threshold Editions, 2012

Synopsis

A compelling memoir from a true hero—and one of the few living persons to ever be awarded the celebrated Medal of Honor.

There was the sound of a single bullet, and then . . . a deafening barrage of gunfire and explosions. There were, literally, thousands of bullets in the air at once, and more tracers streaking across the sky than there were stars overhead. It was a miracle that most of us weren’t killed instantly.

Staff Sergeant Salvatore, “Sal,” Giunta was the first living person to receive the Medal of Honor—the highest honor presented by the U.S. military—since the conclusion of the Vietnam War. In Living with Honor, this hero who maintains he is “just a soldier” tells us the story of the fateful day in Afghanistan that led to his receiving the unique honor. With candor, insight, and humility, Giunta not only recounts the harrowing events leading up to when he and his company fell under siege, but also illustrates the empowering, invaluable lessons he learned.

As a seventeen-year-old teen working at Subway, Giunta was like any other kid trying to figure out which step to take next with his life after graduating from high school. When Giunta walked into the local Army recruiting center in his hometown, he just wanted a free T-shirt. But when he walked out, his curiosity had been piqued and he enlisted in the Army.

Deployed to Afghanistan, Giunta soon learned from the more seasoned soldiers how “different” this war was compared to others that America had fought. Stationed with the 173rd Airborne Brigade near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in the Korengal Valley— also known as the “Valley of Death”—Giunta and his company were ambushed by Taliban insurgents. Giunta went into action after seeing that his squad leader had fallen. Exposing himself to blistering enemy fire, Giunta charged toward his squad leader and administered first aid while he covered him with his own body. Though Giunta was struck by the relentless barrage of bullets, he engaged the enemy and then attempted to reach additional wounded soldiers. When he realized that yet another soldier was separated from his unit, he advanced forward. Discovering two rebels carrying away a U.S. soldier, Giunta killed one insurgent and wounded the other, and immediately provided aid to the injured soldier. More than just a remarkable memoir by a remarkable person, Living with Honor is a powerful testament to the human spirit and all that one can achieve when faced with seemingly impossible obstacles.

***

The President clasps the medal around my neck. Applause fills the room. But I know it’s not for me alone. I look at my mom and dad. I look at Brennan’s parents and I look at Mendoza’s. And I try to communicate to Brennan and Mendoza wordlessly: This is for you . . . and for everyone who has fought and died. For everyone who has made the ultimate sacrifice. I am not a hero. I’m just a soldier.

—Salvatore A. Giunta, from Living with Honor

About this title

About the Author:

Salvatore A. Giunta retired from active duty in 2011. Prior to that, he was responsible for the health, welfare, morale, training, and accountability of the soldiers in his company in the Army, working to ensure all unit family members were well taken care of while their spouses were deployed in Afghanistan. He is one of the few living persons to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor, and he was presented the award by President Obama in a White House ceremony on November 16, 2010. Giunta has also received numerous other commendations, including the Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal and the Purple Heart. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Jen, and their daughter.

Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Joe Layden has written more than thirty books for adults and children, including the critically acclaimed title, The Last Great Fight and the #1 New York Times bestseller The Rock Says. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife, Susan, and their two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Living with Honor CHAPTER 1

I should probably warn you at the outset that there is nothing very inspirational or heroic about the early part of my life. There is no military tradition in my family, no long gray line of service that inspired my enlistment. To the best of my knowledge, I have only two relatives who served in the military: a grandfather who did two years in the Navy during World War II, and an uncle on my mother’s side who retired after twenty-one years of service, also in the Navy. Although I’m sure they were decent men who served their country honorably, neither one really inspired me, simply because I never really knew either of them. I suppose my uncle might have had some wisdom to impart, or at least some practical information about what it’s like to serve in the military, but I rarely had a chance to speak with him. Practically speaking, there wasn’t much need for a Navy man to spend time in Iowa, where I grew up. In recent years we’ve gotten to know each other a bit, but when I was a kid he was just someone whose name we invoked from time to time. Both he and his job were a mystery.

Our family history is a fairly typical American story, although maybe a bit more colorful than most. Three generations back, Augustine Giunta emigrated from Termini Imerese, a small Sicilian port city of maybe seventy thousand people located roughly twenty kilometers from Palermo.

My great-grandfather Augustine first came to the United States with one of his brothers, Anthony, when he was just fourteen years old in 1892. Augustine worked in Chicago at markets until he was twenty-eight years old, sending money back to his mother in Italy and traveling back to see her from time to time. When he went back to Italy, he would work as a sheepherder, making five cents a month. In 1905, he married Josephine Pusateri and together they emigrated to the United States, arriving first at Ellis Island and then moving to McHenry, Illinois—roughly sixty miles northwest of Chicago. They soon opened an ice cream parlor in the Chicago area.

As I understand it, being a Sicilian in America at that time was a rather difficult and complicated matter. Sicily, of course, had its own issues with organized crime and the pressure it exerted. Some people were marrying into their own families in a desperate attempt to preserve lineage and avoid the corrupting influence of the Mafia. Others simply pulled up roots and left their homeland. The Giunta family became fractured around the turn of the century: Some stayed in Sicily and some came to America. But even among those that immigrated, there was disagreement over how the family name would be represented in the New World.

There was, of course, a thriving criminal element in Chicago at the time, and because of this Augustine and Josephine figured it wasn’t a safe place to raise a family. Augustine decided they would move to Dubuque after hearing the town announced at the train station in Chicago and then taking the train there to see what it had to offer. Among the first things he saw were some Italian storefronts, and the decision was made on the spot. During the move from McHenry to Dubuque, there was a train wreck in which all of the family’s ice cream parlor glassware broke. Lacking the funds to purchase new equipment, Augustine and his brother Sam bought a horse and wagon and in 1913 began delivering produce door-to-door. By 1928 they had opened Giunta Brothers Produce in an open-market area of Dubuque. Business went so well that the family (which by this time included Augustine’s two sons, Salvatore and Vince) opened a second Giunta Brothers Produce store in Clinton, Iowa, in 1940. That store, unfortunately, burned down in 1963, and due to a combination of financial problems and the growing popularity of large supermarkets, the family produce store gradually went out of business, prompting my great-grandfather to reconsider the merits of a being a small business owner.

Having now visited Termini Imerese, I can’t help but be filled with admiration for my great-grandfather. To think of that journey—from a coastal city in Sicily to Chicago and finally to Dubuque, Iowa—well, you don’t do something like that unless you have a sturdy set of balls. I can only imagine the disorientation the Giuntas must have felt while passing through the great, sweeping cornfields of eastern Iowa. But I guess they figured it was worth the risk.

Family history gets a little fuzzy after that. I was named after my grandfather, Salvatore, who held a number of different jobs in addition to serving in the Navy. I do know he was stationed for a while in Australia, and that he suffered from a variety of health problems, most notably emphysema, and from what I hear he was a good and honest man. But my dad didn’t talk about him that much, and I always got the sense that Salvatore Giunta was not a strong, visible father figure in his kids’ lives. At least, not in the manner that my father was involved in our lives. But I suppose that’s a generational difference.

My father, Steven Giunta, is Iowa born and raised. He grew up in Dubuque, went to school in Chicago, came back home, and eventually got a job as a lab technician for Abbott Laboratories, covering a territory that stretched across the eastern portion of the state. I was born in Clinton, Iowa, and we spent a few years there before we moved to Cedar Rapids, which gave Dad the opportunity to get home more often.

My mother is of Irish descent; her maiden name was Rosemary Judge. There’s actually some Irish blood in my father’s family as well, so despite having a name like Salvatore Giunta, I’m more Irish than Italian. It’s a volatile mix, but a good one, in my opinion. You get the Irish and the Italians together, and nobody backs down from a fight.

Looking back on it, I was blessed with a remarkably stable and nurturing upbringing. I didn’t always see it that way at the time, unfortunately, but I know better now. Before getting married, my mother had worked as a security guard at the Quad Cities Generating Station, a nuclear power plant located in Cordova, Illinois. I never saw this part of her life and couldn’t imagine it, frankly—the idea of my mom wearing a uniform, carrying a gun, and escorting truck drivers from the front gate to their destination within the plant was almost beyond comprehension. That part of her life had long since passed by the time I came along. And for the next several years she was a stay-at-home mom, raising three kids while my father worked, and re-entering the workforce only when all of her children were in school.

I have two younger siblings, a brother named Mario and a sister named Katie. We’re all lucky to have been raised in this environment. Cedar Rapids was a city of perhaps a hundred thousand people when I was growing up—big enough to be interesting, but not overwhelming. We lived in a pleasant suburban subdivision where the doors were never locked and you knew all your neighbors. Mom was actively involved in everything we did, from teaching arts and crafts to arranging play dates with other kids. It was idyllic.

Best of all, we lived right across the street from the city’s municipal golf course. I wasn’t a country club kid—we didn’t have that kind of money. Nevertheless, thanks to the city of Cedar Rapids, I became an avid golfer. A youth golf membership at the muni was ridiculously cheap. For a hundred bucks you could golf every day, all summer long, quitting only when your hands blistered or you grew bored or frustrated. It was easily the best deal in town. As a result, from roughly the age of nine, golf became my passion. I’d get up in the morning, throw my bag over my shoulder, and meet a few of my friends on the first tee. Sometimes we’d stay there all day long.

Golf was the first sport that really captured my attention, which is interesting when you consider that it’s such a contemplative, finicky sport, and I was by nature a hyperactive and even somewhat reckless boy. But time and circumstance and proximity allowed me to get serious about it. Golf also encouraged me to learn the fine art of bullshitting, a skill that comes in handy to this day. There were times I’d show up in the clubhouse alone, eager to play a round, only to find that I’d been assigned to a foursome with three strangers, some of whom were older than my parents. I learned to introduce myself, and to act like I belonged there. I tried always to be respectful, because I knew that, unlike me, most of them had paid some fairly serious money for the privilege of golfing. I’d listen thoughtfully to their conversations, choosing carefully any words I might contribute. Last thing I wanted was for them to think I was some punk kid. Fortunately, my game spoke for itself. At that time, when I was golfing virtually every day, I could outshoot a lot of grown-ups, and my skill on the course gave me confidence in social interactions.

Golf helped me fine-tune interpersonal skills like shaking hands or looking someone in the eye when I spoke. I could do twenty-seven holes a day; sometimes thirty-six holes. Then I could walk home, jump on my bike, and ride a mile or two to hang out with my buddies. How many boys have that sort of freedom and fun when they’re nine or ten years old?

Yeah . . . I was lucky.

Like most kids in Iowa, I was introduced to wrestling at an early age as well. While wrestling is an overlooked or forgotten sport in most parts of the country, it continues to be practiced with an almost religious fervor in the Hawkeye State. I was in first grade the first time I wrestled, weighed maybe fifty pounds. I got into it because all of my cousins wrestled, and it was Iowa, and the sport just seemed to be out there in the atmosphere, taking up space and demanding interest. Within a few years, though, I’d learned how to golf and my interest in wrestling ebbed and flowed from that point forward. I liked the physicality of the sport, the intensity of one-on-one battle, but golf was more convenient, more fun. And I was better at it.

Golf gets into your blood, in ways both good and bad. As a grown man I golf only recreationally, more for the peacefulness and tranquility it offers than for any desire to master the game or shoot a particular score. I like being outdoors; I like the smell of a freshly clipped green, and the feel of the earth giving slightly beneath my feet. When I golf I am reminded of how much I love nature and the outdoors, and how much I have to be grateful for. In the beginning, though, I was a competitor and a student of the game. For maybe five years I soaked up every lesson I could learn, spent hours on the driving range and putting green. I was calm and focused, determined to absorb everything around me. I’d find myself in a foursome with better golfers and start taking mental notes. It was a healthy, productive obsession.

And then it wasn’t.

I golfed so much, and became so familiar with my home course, that I began to expect perfection. The slightest deviation—a single bad approach shot or three-putted green—could mess up an entire round. By the time I hit the teenage years, I had become a volatile and unpredictable golfer—your basic club-throwing, cursing, red-faced maniac. And that’s when I quit. Golfing was no longer fun; it was an exercise in frustration. I’d started out playing for economic reasons, falling in love with the game because it was enjoyable and a good way to spend time with my buddies, and now I cared only about shooting a great score. If I didn’t par the first three holes, I’d want to turn around, march back to the clubhouse, and start all over again. I sought perfection, and perfection just isn’t possible. Not in golf; not in life. There are things you can’t control.

Fortunately, other sports are more forgiving. Eighth grade was the first year I could play football for my school team, and I fell for it almost as quickly as I had fallen for golf, although in a very different way, and for very different reasons. How can I put this without sounding like a knucklehead? I guess I can’t, so I’ll just say it:

I liked to hit people.

It kind of surprised me that I felt that way, as I’d never been a particularly big or tough kid. Even now, I’m only five-foot-nine, maybe 175 pounds. And I don’t think of myself as being especially aggressive or temperamental by nature. With adolescence, though, I was flooded with testosterone, and it was in need of some proper channeling. Football was the most obvious and healthy option. Anyway, the competition for golf in Cedar Rapids was intense. If I wanted to excel at something, football provided a much wider path. That realization, combined with my growing annoyance with the sport of golf, and the satisfaction I felt whenever I had a chance to put on a helmet and collide with another boy, led me to football. Truth is, while I still enjoy golf to this day, I also enjoy flattening someone to the ground once in a while. No point in denying who and what we are.



Something happened to me around middle school. For a while I was a reasonably engaged and successful student, but then things began to change. School lost its appeal and quickly became merely something I was required to attend, several hours of forced inactivity made tolerable only by the presence of middle-school girls. I’m not proud to say this, but by the time I reached high school, here’s the way I looked at it: I know I need a diploma in order to do anything with my life, and all my friends are here anyway, so . . . I guess I’ll keep going.

If dropping out had been an acceptable option, I might have quit school at the age of sixteen, but it wasn’t an option. Not in my house. So I continued to float through school, getting Cs and Bs without a whole lot of effort, never striving for anything more than that (even though I was capable), never missing class often enough or causing sufficient trouble to get tossed out or even suspended. I went to school for my own reasons—which had nothing to do with academics—and figured I had control of the situation. I didn’t lack confidence or capability, that’s for sure, but I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a serious student. I didn’t exert myself, didn’t study, didn’t lose a moment’s sleep about how I would perform on a given test or lab. I’d just sit in class, half-listening, half-daydreaming, and then I’d take the test and generally do well enough to avoid calling attention to my performance.

And that was fine with me.

It was not acceptable to my parents, however. I’m a new father myself now, so I have a completely different perspective on a lot of things that occurred while I was growing up, but at the time I just didn’t understand why my mother and father were so exasperated by my lack of academic effort. That I was a perfectly competent but indifferent student was a source of unending irritation and frustration to them, as it would be for any parent. I would never go so far as to call myself “smart,” but certainly I was capable of more in the classroom than I had demonstrated. I was a classic underachiever, and what parent wouldn’t find that disappointing?

“What’s the big deal?” I’d say. “It’s not like I’m flunking out.”

This often provoked a lecture about responsibility and the importance of setting goals and having some greater purpose in life, some focus and ambition . . . none of which I wanted to hear. As a result, my parents and I engaged in a running battle, one that stretched out over the course of some five years, ultimately ending with a fracturing of our relationship—particularly bet...

About this edition

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1451691467
• ISBN 13: 9781451691467
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304