Free Republic

A Navy SEAL will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor on October 22. Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy is the third man to receive America's highest military award for valor in the War on Terror. U.S. Navy press release: Murphy was the officer-in-charge of the SEAL element, which was tasked with locating a high- level Taliban militia leader to provide intelligence for a follow-on mission to capture or destroy the local leadership and disrupt enemy activity. However local Taliban sympathizers discovered the SEAL unit and immediately revealed their position to Taliban fighters. The element was besieged on a mountaintop by scores...

On September 13, 2006, at a solemn ceremony at the U.S. Navy’s “Lone Sailor” Memorial in our Nation’s capital, a crowd of 300 friends, family, and warriors gathered to watch and hear the Secretary of the Navy, Donald C. Winter, honor the lives and sacrifices of our two most recent Navy Cross heroes by presenting posthumous medals to the wives of Gunner’s Mate Second Class (Sea, Air and Land (SEAL)) Danny P. Dietz, and Sonar Technician Second Class (SEAL) Matthew G. Axelson, United States Navy. -snip- Petty Officers Dietz and Axelson were part of a four-man Special Reconnaissance ground element...