A
MAX V. SOLIVEN AWARD
By
Mortz C. Ortigoza
I
don’t know if we in the Philippines have the Tex McCary Award of
the Congressional Honor Society (CHS)
in the United States just like the White
House Correspondents'
Association
that I wrote before to organize where we media practitioners can
invite the President of the Republic and other heads of the
“Nomenklaturas” to “mock” and humor them through famous stand -up comedians in a black-tie dinner.
I
was browsing this morning a book’s Medal
of Honor
co-written by War Veteran and renowned CBS’s 60 Minutes Anchor Mike
Wallace about media
men who were recipients of the Text McCary Award.
Wallace,
a World War-II Veteran and 19 Emmy Awardees,
said that he was the
second recipient of
the Award
in
a
fete.
Text
McCary
Award is
given to those who, through their life’s work, have distinguished
themselves by service or unbiased coverage of the United States
military through journalism.
 |
| SIEGE. Media men adjust the lenses of their cameras during the Marawi Siege in the Philippines where state security with the help of foreign powers like the U.S fought Muslim radical rebels in an expensive war where countless numbers of people died and edifices of Marawi City burned literally to the ground. Photo Credit: Spicemedi.com |
Wallace
said the
ultimate award an American combatant can received is the
Congressional Medal of Honor. By the end of World War II, he cited, the Medal
had taken on the aura of a sacred icon, the stuff of legend. Some of
its most celebrated recipients became legendary heroes like Eddie
Rickenbacker and Sergeant Alvin York from World War I and Jimmy
Doolittle and Audie Murphy from the Second World War.
“My
first contact with a Medal of Honor recipient didn’t take place
until 1957, long after I’d returned to civilian life
and resumed my career in broadcast journalism. By
the time, I
was doing a weekly interview show on ABC, and one night the object of
my scrutiny was a U.S Army veteran who’d been getting a lot of
controversial attention – as well as the Medal of Honor – for his
heroic exploits during World War II. His square name was Charles
Kelly, but to those familiar with his story, he was mainly known by
his colorful nickname - “:Commando” Kelly. Interviewing Kelly to
our viewers, I marveled at his various feats of valor, especially at
the Battle of Salerno, where, single-handed, he’d killed 40 German soldiers in a span of 20 minutes,”
he
said on that book.
***
According
to the law
in the United States and I believed the same in the Philippines, where its people love to
copy cat anything from the Yanks’ Constitution to their Rock &
Roll bands,
a Medal of Honor’ awardee “May
by law be awarded only to one who in action involving conflict with
an enemy” distinguished
himself conspicuously
by gallantry and intrepidity”.
There
must also be, Wallace
continued,
evidence that he put his own life on the line and that he acted
“above
and beyond the call of duty.”
When I was a kid I learned from
my book worm's military father, a Korean War Veteran who is
92 years old now and lives with my mother in
our ancestral home in Cotabato,
that no one can receive a Medal of Honor or
Medal of Valor for the Filipinos
for having acted under orders, no matter how heroically he carried
out those orders, for the medal is reserved strictly for those who
act of their own accord and out of complete selfless. It is those
rigorous
conditions that set the Medal of Honor a
cut
from all other military commendations.
***
The
swashbuckling ivory-handled Colt revolver
carrying U.S Army Three-Star General
George Patton once said that he would have given his immortal
soul for the Medal.
Not
to be outdone gee whiz
two occupants of the White House – Presidents
Harry
Truman and Lyndon Johnson – told recipients they would rather have,
son
of a gun,
the Medal
than be President.
Damn,
if given a chance I'll immediately choose to be President than get those Medals,
te-he! Praktikalidad
lang anak ng bakang dalaga kasi Noy-Pi tayo hahaha!
Scintillating
Ilokoslovakia and Saluyot nonpareil Columnist Max V. Soliven
said that a Filipino
Medal
of Valor recipient dies,
his
"remains" are buried in a specially reserved area in
the Libingan
ng mga Bayani with
most of our country’s Presidents.
He said the Award is so prestigious that the Philippines President (and everybody in the military) salutes to whoever wears it be it a Private or a Captain.
In
his Op-Ed Article at the Philippines Star in August 25, 2005 titled: "Not
all men of valor got a medal: We must honor those who did", the Late Manong Max wrote:
“The
other Medal of Valor awardee present was Major Cirilito E. Sobejana,
PMA 1987 (the
present AFP’s
Chief of Staff - MCO),
from Zamboanguita, Negros Oriental. Sobejana was the officer who led
the operation which tracked down and killed the founder of the Abu
Sayyaf, Abdulrajik Abubakar Janjalani, in a pitched battle in Basilan
on December 18, 1998. In that hand-to-hand encounter, Lito Sobejana’s
right arm was shattered with bullets from an AK-47. Refusing to have
the arm amputated and determined to remain on active service,
Sobejana underwent 9 surgical operations in Hawaii and the mainland
USA. He recovered the use of arm and hand, and has just passed his
latest physical tests, remaining very much in active service”.
There
was a poster in Facebook last
year that
was condemned by netizens probably
army men
because
of
his ignorance when
he mocked the
then Three- Star
General and
Army Commanding Chief Sobrejana
saluting with
his left hand in
a military rite.
Of
course the General could not salute on his right hand as what we read how
that lethal
7.62×39mm cartridge
with a muzzle velocity of 715 m/s (2,350 ft/s)
AK-47 bullets, bigger and powerful than those
5.56 mm of the M-16 Armalite assault rifle our soldiers carry.
Another
Valor recipient
Soliven mentioned was
“the
redoubtable, charismatic Col. Arturo "Art" Ortiz, whose
popular nickname among younger officers and the rank and file is,
would you believe, "Valor".
I
met Ortiz when I worked at the public information office of the
Philippine Military Academy in the late 1980s. I was not sure if he,
a Major then, was then assigned at the Office of Superintendent Brig.
General Boy Enrile or the office of Academy’s Chief of Staff. But I
saw him as a tall slim athletic bodied soldier with his surname
embroidered on a
patch at
his right breast part of his uniform.
The most
senior among
the surviving Medal of Valor awardees, Ortiz
earned the military’s highest honor in 1990, in Murcia, Negros
Occidental.
“Under
cover of darkness, he led his troops through a grueling 11-hour cross
country foot march, traversing through steep forested slopes, wide
sugarcane fields and finally scaling a 1,000 foot ravine to strike a
surprise against 300 enemies. In his two-hour gun battle, his 606th
Company killed 84 NPAs, captured eight, wounded 105 and recovered 33
firearms. This feat remains unsurpassed in the AFP’s long
counterinsurgency campaign against the CPP/NPA,” Soliven
wrote.
***
I
digress from the
Tex
McCary Award's topic which we could name from a media practitioner like the
late Max V. Soliven who loved to write about the Men in Uniform, am I
correct my kabaleyan Kuya Art Lomibao?
The latter, a fan and a friend of Soliven, is a former four -star general,
Philippine National Police’s Chief, and member of the elite Philippine Military Academy's Class of
1972.
If
we have not form an organization like the Tex,
those
stakeholders in the sort
of Congressional
Honor Society, the National Press Club, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and even those Human Right Groups, whose brass are awed by the unbiased but zealous reporting
of media men
and
women,
should meet and discuss the creation of this laudable endeavor that
will
award
each of them in a year or two or more and
further buttress the support and love of our people to our cops
and
soldiers.
Time
to form say this Maximo Soliven
Award for
those intrepid and unbiased reportage of the members of the Fourth Estate in the Pinoy Land.
READ
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(You
can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com
and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at
totomortz@yahoo.com)
