David Bellavia

I believe that peer pressure is an incredible thing. We always seem to talk about it in negative ways. But sometimes peer pressure gets you through difficult times because it's impossible to take a step backward when everyone else is moving forward.

David Gregory Bellavia (born November 10, 1975) is a former United States Army soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Second Battle of Fallujah. Bellavia has also received the Bronze Star Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, two Army Achievement Medals, and the New York State Conspicuous Service Cross. In 2005, Bellavia was inducted into the New York Veterans' Hall of Fame. He has subsequently been involved with politics in Western New York State. Upon being awarded the Medal of Honor on June 25, 2019, Bellavia became the first, and currently only living recipient of the Medal of Honor for service during the Iraq War.

The Big Red One is the backbone of the American infantry. These days, it is sometimes overshadowed by the airborne divisions in the popular press. The 1st Infantry Division, with the Ramrods at the top of the spear, has won every battle it has fought since 1918.

It's surreal and unnatural to get credit when you've lived your entire life to be about the team. It's never about the individual. I'm not here to celebrate me.

I served with some of the greatest men I've ever met in my entire life. And I truly believe that 99 percent of our military is Medal of Honor capable. Any soldier who is put in a position to bleed in order to save people would do exactly what I did. This is who we are and how we were raised in the Armed Forces.

The easiest job in the world is to lead. The most difficult job is to follow. You have to trust that guy out in front. You have to trust their guidance and do what it takes to not be the weakest link in the chain.

You become a wolf- just sniffing the air and smelling. Everything stops. Your whole body freezes. You don't breathe. You don't think. All you do is become a single, focused thought: There's a threat here and it needs to be put down.

There are a million reasons why we're divided in this country, but I've never cared what your skin color was, who you worshipped, how you voted, or who you loved. Male, female, if you are willing to get shot at for me and my buddies, I will follow you, and I will lead you anywhere. We're family.

Quotes

2020s

Modern Warriors (2020) interview

Modern Warriors: Real Stories From Real Heroes by Pete Hegseth. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. First edition November 2020.

• In 2004 in Fallujah, we were involved in so many direct fire engagements. We made eye contact with the enemy. And we lost guys. That was a totally different experience, losing someone that way. You automatically had to address Okay, not only did that just happen, but someone made this happen. That person is still here. House fighting, especially in an urban environment, the sense you most rely on- hearing- is gone. You devolve into an almost animalistic being. Like, I'm smelling this guy. I see a pristine drinking cup on the counter and everything else is covered in dust and grime. A piece of cheese sits on a plate. There's a person here. You become a wolf- just sniffing the air and smelling. Everything stops. Your whole body freezes. You don't breathe. You don't think. All you do is become a single, focused thought: There's a threat here and it needs to be put down.
  • p. 230

• I was always told that this wasn't my role. I was too smart. We worked so hard so that you could become a dentist. Well, I thought, you worked so hard so that I could have a choice.
  • p. 231

• Being empowered by our military service is the greatest gift you can ever receive. Knowing that you've been through worse and got through it is an amazing feeling. And you got through it because it wasn't about me. I wasn't doing it for me. I was doing it for other people. It wasn't ever about me. It was always about other people.
  • p. 233

• Nothing against SEALs and Green Berets and other Special Operations units. They're elite. But there are a lot of just average, normal guys out there that do above-average things. They're a representation of what I believe is the American ethos. It's not necessarily a warrior ethos; it's something that we have in our DNA, and we've had it from our nation's inception. We overcome fear. People ask me, "What do you fear most in the world?" My answer is that I fear fear. I'm afraid of becoming afraid. You have to overcome it in every aspect of your life- whether that's asking that girl out on a date, applying for a job, killing a cockroach in the kitchen. There's something that you're going to have to face.
  • p. 233-234

• I believe that peer pressure is an incredible thing. We always seem to talk about it in negative ways. But sometimes peer pressure gets you through difficult times because it's impossible to take a step backward when everyone else is moving forward. The easiest job in the world is to lead. The most difficult job is to follow. You have to trust that guy out in front. You have to trust their guidance and do what it takes to not be the weakest link in the chain.
  • p. 234

• I found that in the worst part of humanity, there's like this... it's just like God's grace just shows up. You actually feel the presence of God in the worst situation possible. And not just Americans, but the enemy. The enemy is doing beautiful things for each other because they're in it together. It doesn't make me want to stop shooting, but it makes me respect the hell out of them, and it changes my life forever, too. Because we're not fighting storm troopers, and we're not fighting a bunch of yahoos. We're fighting people that are into their cause, believe in their cause, and will die for their cause.
  • p. 238

• We have business on the battlefield, but when that's over, you look back and say, "I hope every person in our country can see a stranger as important as themselves." If you're willing to do things for them, I just think that's the meaning of life. I'm not going to get thanked, you're not going to know my name, you're not going to pay me, and I will still do it. The closest thing I've ever seen to God is when you see people sacrifice knowingly without any concern for themselves.
  • p. 238-239

• I never really thought about legacy when I was in a fight. A legacy is what old men think about when they're dying. But now I realize how important that legacy is.
  • p. 240

• It's important to have different perspectives, and journalism supports that. Today, everyone has an opinion about everything. COVID-19 happens, and suddenly we're all research specialists posting our findings on Facebook or wherever. What we don't do is properly consider the sources of our material, our "facts." Everyone responds emotionally to everything. We paint millennials in a bad light: the iGeneration is awful; but the truth is that my parents' generation thought the same things about us. We were couch potatoes; we lived in our parents' basements until we were twenty-five. Then the Twin Towers fell.
  Every generation is going to be tested. And some people are going to answer the call. Fortunately, I believe that many liberals shoot as straight as conservatives. I served with a lot of guys who hated George W. Bush and his reasons for taking us to war. Now they didn't vote for President Trump. But under fire, they saved my life and they made sure I came home. Those guys are my family. I love them to death. We argue about politics every single day, but we also see beyond that.
  • p. 240-241

• The only way to bridge the divide is if everyone realizes that we all have skin in the game. Everyone has to serve. Does that means they have to be in the military, that we should reinstate the draft? No. We all have to do something that's about doing something for someone other than ourselves. And we should realize that as soldiers, as warriors, we swore an oath of allegiance to a document, to the US Constitution. We were there protecting a document and what that document represents. We chose to go be uncomfortable so that others could remain in comfort. We didn't do it for our careers or our bottom line.
  • p. 241

Remember the Ramrods (2022)

Remember the Ramrods: An Army Brotherhood in War and Peace. Boston: Mariner Books. All quotes are from the hardcover edition.

• My greatest regret has always been leaving the service I so dearly loved. I tried to make it work at home, but but the pull of the battlefield was too strong. Out there, I had meaning and purpose. You live on the raged edge of danger that forces you to confront your own mortality. Every breath becomes euphoric. You exist in a different emotional framework. In rural western New York, life's color was drained away by a million little nicks. You stress over bills and taxes, a car that's become unreliable. The house needs siding, the floors in the kitchen need to be redone. All the logistical headaches of modern life take center stage and start to define your life.
  Out there, on the battlefield, none of that shit matters. None of it. The complexities vanish, and everything boils down to this: can you measure up? When you do, you feel like a rock star. Nothing- no drug in the world- can compare to that moment of self-discovery. For me, self-discovery in combat convinced me the essence of life distills down to one thing: proving to yourself why you are needed in the fight.
  • p. xii

• The Ramrods were part of the legendary 1st Infantry Division. Movies have been made on the Big Red One for its actions on D-Day and through Europe during World War II. The Fighting First fought in nearly every major American battle of World War I; it saw combat for five years in Vietnam before being forward deployed to Germany to face the Warsaw Pact/Soviet threat during the final decades of the Cold War. The Big Red One is the backbone of the American infantry. These days, it is sometimes overshadowed by the airborne divisions in the popular press. The 1st Infantry Division, with the Ramrods at the top of the spear, has won every battle it has fought since 1918.
  • p. xii-xiii

American Heroes (2024) interview

New York: Little, Brown & Company. Written by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann, with Tim Malloy & Chris Mooney. Bellavia's interview is transcribed on pages 137-147.

• Today is my birthday. I'm twenty-nine. It's November 10, 2004. I'm a staff sergeant with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, stationed in Fallujah, Iraq. I'm near the end of a thirty-six-month "all others" tour away from my family, currently deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fallujah had been abandoned for six months when we arrived in the late fall of 2004. During that time, four thousand to six thousand enemy insurgents have entrenched, preparing their defenses for our arrival. Bodies are all over the street, festering bacteria. Within a matter of days of our arrival, we've all suffered strep throat, fevers, and diarrhea. It's horrible. We engage in close-quarters combat, within a deadly two-foot radius. The enemy is a mix of highly skilled professionals and amateurs who fight with passion. We never know what we're going to encounter. I'm not bothered by fear. I'm fueled by it.
  • p. 138

• "Into the Hot Zone," the article Mick Ware writes about that night, is Time magazine's cover story less than two weeks later. I earn a Silver Star. But all I hear for ten years is, "Bullshit. I don't believe it. That didn't happen." Then I get a call from the military paper Stars and Stripes. "Hey, you're nominated for the Medal of Honor, did you know that? I hear there's a videotape. Do you have a comment? I'm immediately on the defensive. No one who's served in Iraq has received the US Armed Forces' highest military decoration, except posthumously. "What's on the tape? How did you find out?" The Army's trying to tell me that I'm getting the Medal of Honor, and I'm acting like they're trying to put me in jail. Turns out Ware sold a documentary to HBO. He filmed the entire firefight. Honestly, Ware's anti-war and pro-freedom for the press to tell the truth, but he's got the biggest balls of anyone I've ever met in my life. He was right there the whole time. Because of Michael Ware, everything is corroborated. He was recording the fight the entire time.
  • p. 146

• They name me the first living recipient to earn the Medal of Honor for bravery in the Iraq War. A coworker of mine reads about the award. "Hey, some guy with your name is getting the Medal of Honor. Isn't that weird? How many David Bellavias are out there?" "I know, right? It's so weird," I say. It's surreal and unnatural to get credit when you've lived your entire life to be about the team. It's never about the individual. I'm not here to celebrate me.
  I decide to be the first guy to bring his entire unit to the ceremony. If I'm going to go through with this, I'm going to go with the guys that I did it with fifteen years ago. So I get the whole crew in. I bring thirty-two service members to the ceremony in the East Room at the White House in June 2019, including the twelve who were there with me on that night in 2004, plus five Gold Star families, the interpreter, and Mick Ware.
  • p. 146-147

• I served with some of the greatest men I've ever met in my entire life. And I truly believe that 99 percent of our military is Medal of Honor capable. Any soldier who is put in a position to bleed in order to save people would do exactly what I did. This is who we are and how we were raised in the Armed Forces. There are a million reasons why we're divided in this country, but I've never cared what your skin color was, who you worshipped, how you voted, or who you loved. Male, female, if you are willing to get shot at for me and my buddies, I will follow you, and I will lead you anywhere. We're family. That's what makes us elite American warriors. When I was younger, I thought I needed hate to win, hate and anger at my enemy to sustain myself. Now, as I look back, I recognize that we don't fight out of hate. We fight for love- love of our country, our homeland, our family, and our unit. That's stronger than anything the enemy has.
  • p. 147

Quotes about Bellavia

• David Bellavia was the first living recipient of the Iraq War to receive our nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. In June 2019, at a White House ceremony, David joined America's most exclusive and heroic club. He is one of only 3,525 individuals who have earned that illustrious award since its creation in 1861. David is grateful that he was nominated and selected for his actions in the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004, while keeping things in perspective.
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 230

• A native of Buffalo, New York, David grew up the youngest of four sons. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Brunacini, had a great influence on him. Grandpa Joe served in the army during the Normandy campaign and was awarded a Bronze Star... Following his graduation from the University of Buffalo, David enlisted in the Army in 1999. Originally assigned to a recruiting battalion so his infant son could receive medical care, David eventually became an infantryman. He served in Kosovo and Operations Iraqi Freedom I and II. David left the Army in 2005 and co-founded Vets for Freedom, an advocacy group for combat veterans and their battlefield mission. He also worked as an embedded reporter in Iraq before returning to the United States, and lives in New York State with his wife and three children.
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 231

• David's actions as a squad leader during Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in November 10, 2004, speak volumes about the qualities he and other members of his platoon possessed. Nearing the end of a twelve-building clearing operation, they entered a structure and came under immediate machine gun fire in a front hallway. Ambushed and effectively trapped, and with two soldiers already wounded, David's men were in dire need of assistance. David stepped in, retrieved an automatic weapon, and first with another soldier, and then alone, according to his Medal of Honor citation, "Acting on instinct to save the members of his platoon... Staff Sergeant Bellavia ultimately cleared an entire enemy-filled house, destroyed four insurgents, and badly wounded a fifth. Staff Bellavia's bravery, complete disregard for his own safety, and unselfish and courageous actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army."
  • Pete Hegseth, Modern Warriors (New York: Broadside Books, 2020), p. 233