A war hero you should know about

By JAY AMBROSE
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
If news about the American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners were water, we'd have to call Noah back to build a second ark. We're submerged in this stuff, drowning in it.
Perhaps, as a writer named Bob Lonsberry suggests, you would like another part of the story about the U.S. military in the war on terrorism, and I therefore am introducing you to Brian Chontosh, the most amazing hero you have never heard of, someone on the order of Sgt. Alvin York of World War I.
I myself hadn't heard about Chontosh until opening an e-mail the other day from a retired Army officer who suggests that reporting on the Iraqi war is damaging to our cause.
"I just received this," he wrote, "and was just wondering why the 'enemy-comforting media' doesn't like to publish anything that reflects credit on the military."
What he had received was an opinion article written by Lonsberry, a commentator in newspapers, on the Internet and on radio who has been castigated for past remarks that I would never try to justify, but is surely right that many of us would like some news demonstrating that military honor has hardly departed the field.
The story he told was extraordinary. I checked it out on the Web and in the Lexis-Nexis electronic library of newspapers, magazines and wire services. I found just a few news accounts but also found the story is true.
It goes as follows, according to an Associated Press version, a Marine Corps Web site account and the coinciding Lonsberry version.
Chontosh is a 29-year-old Marine captain whose platoon was ambushed in March 2003, during the early days of the war in Iraq. He told the driver of his vehicle to head straight for an enemy machine gun, and he told his own machine gunner to shoot back.
When the vehicle came to the enemy trench, Chontosh jumped out and fired away with his M16A2 rifle and 9 mm pistol until the bullets were gone. He wasn't through. He found an enemy rifle and picked it up and shot Iraqis with it until it had no more ammunition, and then he picked up another enemy rifle and did the same. Finally, he was handed an enemy grenade launcher by another Marine and fired it.
The result was 20 dead enemies and others wounded and captured. The ambush was over. "I was just doing my job," said Chontosh, who on May 6 of this year received the Navy Cross for his heroism.
A comparison
I couldn't help think how comparable his deed was to that of Sgt. York, who on Oct. 8, 1918, killed more than 20 Germans with his rifle and with next to no help captured some 132 more so that the 328th Infantry could advance. Despite his own reluctance -- he returned to a Tennessee farm while refusing to exploit the attention he was getting -- he became World War I's most famous hero.
Chontosh is nowhere near fame. He doesn't even come close to Jessica Lynch, who was hurt in an ambush-caused accident in Iraq, didn't get off a shot, but was rescued from a hospital. Why not? Why isn't he even as well known as Lynndie England, the private who was photographed being sexually abusive to Iraqi prisoners?
I am not sure. I do think many Americans are queasy about the killing that goes along with war. Lynch received so much publicity in part because of being a woman in combat (still unusual) and the drama of her story -- some of which was initially misreported.
The press is paying excessive attention to the prisoner abuse, but it is understandable that reporters would take seriously this setback in our efforts to win over Iraqis and failure to live up to our own standards; bad news often gets more attention than good news, as in reporting on the plane that crashes and not the one that lands safely. Press bias cannot serve as more than a partial answer, if it is an answer at all, because the press is hardly a monolithic whole.
But I do think Chontosh should be famous. He is a model Marine who has shown exceptional courage and fighting ability while saving fellow Marines, defeating the enemy in what many would have thought was a hopelessly dangerous encounter and putting his life on the line on behalf of the rest of us. That's a lot.
XJay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers.