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Thursday, April 13, 2006
Camp Pendleton Marine receives Silver Star
On day he receives medal, former Marine speaks of fallen comrade.
By MICHAEL CORONADO
The Orange County Register
Cpl. Carlos Gomez-Perez today was presented the Sliver Star by Marine Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. Gomez-Perez received the award for bravery during heavy enemy fire while serving as a fire-team leader in Fallujah, Iraq. Natonski said Perez was not in uniform because he was medically discharged after the wounds he received.
The Silver Star
The Silver Star is the third-highest medal awarded for gallantry in action against enemy forces, behind the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross (Army) and the Navy Cross (Navy and Marines). The Silver Star was enacted into law in 1942.
Notable Silver Star recipients
Chesty Puller
Oliver North
Wesley Clark
John McCain
Douglas MacArthur
CAMP PENDLETON The armor-piercing round ripped through the right shoulder of then-Lance Cpl. Carlos Gomez-Perez, leaving a fist-sized hole.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, but the stocky, young Marine felt no pain during the April 2004 firefight.
One floor below him, as Iraqi insurgents fired relentlessly, Gomez-Perez could hear his fellow Marines shouting.
The El Cajon resident propped up his M-16 and pulled the trigger despite his bloodied chest, his thick, wide frame keeping his shoulder intact. He lobbed a grenade with his good arm.
Beside him, Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin, 21, wounded by gunfire, was losing his fight for life. Below him, the shouting continued.
"All I heard was screaming and screaming," Gomez-Perez said.
Gomez-Perez decided he would die before he would be taken prisoner and made a bold move to lead his fellow Marines, several wounded, against their attackers.
His actions that day would earn him the Silver Star for heroism in battle, awarded at a ceremony Wednesday.
Gomez-Perez was challenged in life at an early age.
When he was 9, he ran across the I-805 Freeway in San Diego County with his mother and two sisters in tow, crossing illegally into the country a journey that started in Mexico City. By 12 he started working to earn money for the family.
His mother, Blanca Gomez, a custodian, said that on their journey north the family waded across a channel filled with water using plastic trash bags to stay dry.
"That was a very sad day because we were uncertain of what would happen," she said.
That was 15 years ago.
On Wednesday, Gomez watched a formation of Marines pay honor to her son, a fire team leader for Company E with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and listened to a general describe how a country is thankful for her boy.
"We have a true hero here," Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski told Blanca Gomez now a legal resident and the rest of his family. Gomez-Perez became a U.S. citizen in 2004.
Now, discharged from the Marines, he says his shoulder still hurts and finding work is difficult.
At the ceremony Wednesday at the seaside base, Gomez-Perez wore a Texas flag in his coat pocket, a tribute to Austin, who died that day from his wounds despite being revived twice, Gomez-Perez said.
"It runs through my head every day," said Gomez-Perez, who is indifferent about receiving the award. "I really don't know what it means."
Instead, he remembers the day, the fighting, the wounded and his actions.
"What could I have done differently?" he said he asks himself. "Austin - he's the one who died because I couldn't save him."
