Award those Reporters who Passionately Support our Troops

         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.

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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.

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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.

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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 MY OTHER BLOG/COLUMN

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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)