Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Murphy to receive the MOH
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/10/n ... lieut.html
Here's some more information, including an excerpt from Marcus Luttrell's book from The Navy Times article about the award:Blackfive wrote:...Lt. Ligia Cohen, a 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 — was made Thursday during a White House briefing.
The medal will be presented to Murphy’s family during a 2:30 p.m. ceremony on Oct. 22 at the White House, Cohen said...
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.
Not long after the call, Murphy was shot again, screaming for Luttrell to help him, but Luttrell, also hit and wounded, couldn’t reach him. “There was nothing I could do except die with him,” he wrote.
That day turned more tragic when enemy forces shot down a helicopter carrying members of a quick-reaction force sent to rescue Murphy and his team.
Murphy is survived by his parents, Daniel Murphy and Maureen Murphy, and his brother, John, along with his fiancé, Heather .
