John Basilone Stands Over Raritan

Sometimes there can be a popular misunderstanding of the primary loyalty that all U.S. soldiers adhere to while in battle. We often think of it as an intellectual concept – the struggle for freedom. For Americans the defense of freedom is, in fact, the main justification for going to war. It is never to be minimized. But, when U.S. warriors are in battle, there is nothing intellectual – certainly not romantic – about it. Just think of the roadside bombs maiming and killing U.S. troops in Iraq as you read this.

Soldiers in combat think first and foremost about the protection and survival of their immediate fighting teams: their buddies to their left and to their right, in the front and in the back. No soldier wants to lose his best buddy on the field of fire. That’s why there is so much pain and agony for a soldier when a buddy loses his or her life in battle. Every soldier wants to be with his fighting team and is willing to lose his life to protect anybody on that team.

This came vividly in focus during a May, 2008 ceremony in which young Army Specialists Christopher Corriveau and Eric Moser were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. They had been part of four American paratroopers who were outnumbered 10-to-l by “a massive al Qaida kidnap-and-execution operation in the Iraqi city of Samarra.” Two of the paratroopers were killed in that operation.

When interviewed after the ceremony, Corriveau said that he didn’t consider himself a hero, and that, “Any one of those guys would have taken a bullet for me and likewise for them. I would have taken a bullet for any of them.”

Similarly, that was the same kind of allegiance that Marine Sergeant John Basilone of Raritan Borough, NJ, demonstrated for his own buddies in the midst of warfare. In 1942, after having been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroic action during battle on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific, Basilone returned to the U.S. But he grew weary of stateside duty, turned down a promotion to 2nd Lieutenant, and voluntarily returned to combat in the Pacific, where he rejoined his fighting Marines. In 1945, it cost him his life during the battle for Iwo Jima.

Such is the fidelity felt for comrades which, for men like Basilone and Corriveau, defines a “Band of Brothers.”