According to The Daily News Tribune:
Janet Monti was home nursing a cold when the call came in.
At first, she thought it was a joke.
A person who claimed to be a White House aide asked if she would be around for the next half hour.
Ten minutes later, she was on the phone with the President.
“He said, ‘I hear you’re a little under the weather,’” she recalled of President Barack Obama’s first words to her.
His next words made her swell with a mother’s pride.
The president told her he had just signed a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor for her son and would be presenting it to the family in the fall.
Janet Monti is the mother of U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jared C. Monti, of Raynham, Massachusetts. His father is Paul Monti. He got a similar call from President Obama.
Sgt. 1st Class Monti, was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, serving in Afghanistan.
He was killed by enemy fire on June 21, 2006, while trying to rescue wounded comrades in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was 30.
“The Massachusetts native was inundated with gunfire, but that didn’t stop him from coming to the aid of his fellow wounded comrades.”
Monti served for 12 years in the Army, and was awarded many decorations, including the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, and the Purple Heart.
The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration for bravery in combat.
Sgt.1st Class Monti is the first hero awarded our nation’s highest honor under the Obama administration, and only the sixth soldier to receive the Medal of Honor after almost eight years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
All six Medals have been awarded posthumously.
According to a recent article in the Air Force Times, “With the exception of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, no other major conflict in modern military history has failed to produce a living recipient of the nation’s highest award for valor. And no war has ever produced so few Medal of Honor — or service cross — recipients.”
I have written several several articles decrying the dearth of Medals of Honor awarded to our heroes of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts during the Bush administration and I have continued to lament, under our new president, what I feel is an injustice to our heroes.
On February 15, in a post at The Moderate Voice I wrote:
Mr. Obama…please also consider the following: After nearly seven years of combat in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the previous administration saw fit to award only five Medals of Honor, our nation’s highest military award for valor, to our Iraq and Afghanistan heroes…
There may be some more Medals of Honor “in the pipeline,” but here is a unique opportunity for you, our new President, to recognize the magnificent acts of heroism that surely have been performed by many more than just five of our brave troops.
I am glad that, finally, one more Medal of Honor has come “out of that pipeline,” and I hope that more will follow.
For example, there is the case of Marine Sergeant Rafael Peralta, a scout team leader with Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment who, on November 15, 2004, heroically gave his life protecting his fellow Marines while participating in Operation AL FAJR, the U.S. military effort to retake Fallujah.
Although originally nominated for the Medal of Honor by the Commandant of the Marine Corps and by the Secretary of the Navy almost five years ago, on September 17, 2008, Rafael Peralta’s family was notified by the U.S. Marine Corps that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had rejected the Marine Corps’ recommendation for Sgt. Peralta to receive the Medal of Honor. Instead, Peralta would be receiving the Navy Cross.
As I wrote in “Stolen Valor at the Highest Levels: The Case of Sgt. Rafael Peralta,” this travesty cries for a review by President Obama himself, and I fervently hope that one of the following Medals of Honor awarded by the president will be for Sgt. Rafael Peralta.
