Real-Life Bart Simpson
And selfless American hero. Ross McGinnis, trouble-prone kid, turned his life around, then gave it away to save four comrades when he threw himself on a grenade. Medal of Honor ceeremony next month. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
KNOX, Pa. — Spc. Ross McGinnis, a kid who hated school and even got expelled for buying marijuana on campus, did more than turn his life around.
He saved the lives of four fellow soldiers when he used his body to cover a grenade that an Iraqi insurgent threw from a rooftop into an Army Humvee.
McGinnis, atop the truck in its machine-gun turret, could have dived to safety. Instead, he jumped into the Humvee and pinned the grenade between his back and the vehicle’s radio mount.
The grenade exploded a second or two later, killing McGinnis at age 19.
So powerful was the blast that it nearly took the life of a second soldier, even though McGinnis had turned himself into a shield to protect the others. Shrapnel hit Staff Sgt. Ian Newland in the face and all four limbs. Doctors also diagnosed him with a brain injury.
Newland, 27, a Minnesota native, has settled in Centennial, Colo., with his wife and two children. Lucky to be alive, he thinks of McGinnis every day.
His hope is to be at the White House next month when President Bush posthumously awards McGinnis the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military award.
The Army already has authorized the Medal of Honor for McGinnis, but will not confirm it until the White House staff makes the announcement.
Tom and Romayne McGinnis, parents of the fallen soldier, say it is difficult to think of their skinny, rambunctious son as a national hero.
“He’d remind you more of Bart Simpson than anything else — you know, sort of an underachiever,” said Tom McGinnis, 58. “But when it really meant something, he produced.”
Topics: Iraq, courage, military
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 6:49 pm on Friday, May 16, 2008
6 Responses to “Real-Life Bart Simpson”
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May 16th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
No greater love hath any man …
May 16th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Speechless. God bless you Ross McGinness.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
In a narcissistic world, selflessness is the best part of valor.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:23 am
A good soldier. Vale, Specialist McGinnis.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:15 am
[...] Here’s one. (And we salute him) [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
“An Army recruiter talked to Ross about this time. The Army’s pitch — “Be all you can be” — seemed tailored for somebody who had gotten little out of his natural talents.
He committed to the Army during his junior year of high school, pledging to enlist the following year, after he graduated.”
Dear Post-Gazette, the Army ended its “Be All You Can Be” campaign in 2001. It was replaced for five years by “Army of One.” Today, it uses “Army Strong.”
The subject of your story joined the Army in 2005, four years AFTER “Be All You Can Be” was used on recruitment ads or bandied about by recruiters. Indeed, it wasn’t used at the time the youth got into trouble in junior high school.
One might suggest that this error entered the P-G’s copy because of a misremembered source’s words. But I’d like to think that a newspaper cosmically incompetent when it comes to understanding the military probably just made it up. The reporters and editors didn’t realize that the ad copy used by the Army that recruited its future hero was quite different from what appeared in print, and that anyone with even a passing familiarity with it would note just how far off they were.
Thanks, PG. Nice article, but with enough BS in it to show you don’t really care.