Why Do We Have to Dig Deep for These Stories??

I only found this extraordinary story of a Marines' valor by chance when digging deeper into the military blog links of numerous sites. The story goes all the way back to operations from March 25th of last year! This story should have been front page news on every major newspaper in the country? Remember the old newsreels that touted our successes in WWII?? This is prime material for such. Funny, I don't recall seeing endless footage of award ceremonies and praise from his fellow service members or a segment on 60 Minutes or the cover of Time or Newsweek. No interviews of his friends and family back home.

Another American hero that was recognized by his hometown paper but scarcely mentioned elsewhere. The St. Petersburg Times did a great job of memorializing and recreating this man's incredibly courageous actions to protect his troops. This story traces it's history to April 4th 2003.

Still more positive stories of courage and valor -

Marines confront, overcome the crucible of Fallujah

By Rick Rogers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 31, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq – The citations for valor read like scenes from a movie, and it's only through cinematic comparisons that Cpl. Howard Lee Hampton Jr. can describe the combat his Camp Pendleton unit saw here in April.
"It was beyond anything in 'Black Hawk Down,' " said Hampton, 21, referring to the movie about the actual downing of two U.S. helicopters in 1993 Somalia and the harrowing rescue operation in which the lives of 18 American soldiers were lost.
"I remember going into the city in the (amphibious assault vehicle) and hearing the bullets hit off the sides.
"When the door opened, I thought about the scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when they were coming up to the beach and that guy got hit right in the head before he ever got to the beach," Hampton said, this time conjuring up the movie account of D-Day during World War II.
"Once we got in the city, we had hundreds and hundreds of people trying to kill us," said the native of El Paso, Tex., recalling how the cascade of enemy shell casings from windows above the Marines sounded like a never-ending slot machine payout.

To read the rest of this compelling story, go here.

It just seems shameful that every American doesn't know of these heroic individuals and what they have done.