NEW YORK One morning a little more than 41 years ago, four of us all soldiers marched with the president from the Oval Office into the blinding sunshine. We mounted a low platform on the South Lawn under a bright blue, cloudless sky, and during a short ceremony, we were presented with Medals of Honor by Richard M. Nixon. [img_r]http://msnbcmedia4.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/101115_giunta.grid-4x2.jpg[/img_r]
One by one, a name and citation was read aloud, and then the president fastened a medal, hanging on a ribbon, around each neck. In just a few minutes our lives were forever changed.
Not much of the event is still clear to me. I vaguely recall that Nixon wore makeup and that he gave a major policy speech at the end of the ceremony. In the East Room, where we had gathered before the ceremony, the refreshments were stale. In the Oval Office, the president asked me if I was nervous, and I nervously said I wasnt.
But the one thing that I recall most vividly is that there were thousands of people standing on the grass to witness the event. That morning the gates to the South Lawn were thrown open, and absolutely anyone could enter the White House grounds and watch the ceremony.
Jack Jacobs' Newsvine blog
Government employees were excused from work to attend. There were people as far as I could see thousands of them pushed all the way back to the wrought iron fence that ringed the grounds. Security was a much different, much simpler affair back then. Today, you cant drive or fly near the place, and pretty soon you wont be able to walk anywhere near it either.
On Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010, Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta receives a Medal of Honor for his service in Afghanistan. He will become the first living recipient since Vietnam to receive the honor for action in a war still being fought on foreign soil.
At 27 years old, he is less than half the age of the next oldest recipient, and he is so young that he could, in time, be the only one left alive.