A while back I read an article discussing what US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia defined as an American. It wasn’t the color of your skin, or even whether your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. What bound us all as Americans was our love and respect for the country that we live in, and specifically for the constitution of the United States.

If that is the case, those who have shown their love for this country like Sgt. Rafael Peralta deserve to be hailed as a true American. My online friend Peter Mork, from Economics W/ A Face, links to his story.

Here is a description of what makes Sgt. Rafael Peralta story so special,

FALLUJAH, Iraq(Dec. 2, 2004) — “You’re still here, don’t forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today.”

As a combat correspondent, I was attached to Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment for Operation Al Fajr, to make sure the stories of heroic actions and the daily realities of battle were told.

On this day, I found myself without my camera. With the batteries dead, I decided to leave the camera behind and live up to the ethos “every Marine a rifleman,” by volunteering to help clear the fateful buildings that lined streets.

After seven days of intense fighting in Fallujah, the Marines of 1/3 embraced a new day with a faceless enemy.

We awoke November 15, 2004, around day-break in the abandoned, battle-worn house we had made our home for the night. We shaved, ate breakfast from a Meal, Ready-to-Eat pouch and waited for the word to move.

The word came, and we started what we had done since the operation began – clear the city of insurgents, building by building.

As an attachment to the unit, I had been placed as the third man in a six-man group, or what Marines call a ’stack.’ Two stacks of Marines were used to clear a house. Moving quickly from the third house to the fourth, our order in the stack changed. I found Sgt. Rafael Peralta in my spot, so I fell in behind him as we moved toward the house.

A Mexican-American who lived in San Diego, Peralta earned his citizenship after he joined the Marine Corps. He was a platoon scout, which meant he could have stayed back in safety while the squads of 1st Platoon went into the danger filled streets, but he was constantly asking to help out by giving them an extra Marine. I learned by speaking with him and other Marines the night before that he frequently put his safety, reputation and career on the line for the needs and morale of the junior Marines around him.

When we reached the fourth house, we breached the gate and swiftly approached the building. The first Marine in the stack kicked in the front door, revealing a locked door to their front and another at the right.

Kicking in the doors simultaneously, one stack filed swiftly into the room to the front as the other group of Marines darted off to the right.

“Clear!” screamed the Marines in one of the rooms followed only seconds later by another shout of “clear!” from the second room. One word told us all we wanted to know about the rooms: there was no one in there to shoot at us.

We found that the two rooms were adjoined and we had another closed door in front of us. We spread ourselves throughout the rooms to avoid a cluster going through the next door.

Two Marines stacked to the left of the door as Peralta, rifle in hand, tested the handle. I watched from the middle, slightly off to the right of the room as the handle turned with ease.

Ready to rush into the rear part of the house, Peralta threw open the door.

‘POP! POP! POP!’ Multiple bursts of cap-gun-like sounding AK-47 fire rang throughout the house.

Three insurgents with AK-47s were waiting for us behind the door.

Peralta was hit several times in his upper torso and face at point-blank range by the fully-automatic 7.62mm weapons employed by three terrorists.

Mortally wounded, he jumped into the already cleared, adjoining room, giving the rest of us a clear line of fire through the doorway to the rear of the house.

We opened fire, adding the bangs of M-16A2 service rifles, and the deafening, rolling cracks of a Squad Automatic Weapon, or “SAW,” to the already nerve-racking sound of the AKs. One Marine was shot through the forearm and continued to fire at the enemy.

I fired until Marines closer to the door began to maneuver into better firing positions, blocking my line of fire. Not being an infantryman, I watched to see what those with more extensive training were doing.

I saw four Marines firing from the adjoining room when a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room, rolling to a stop close to Peralta’s nearly lifeless body.

In an act living up to the heroes of the Marine Corps’ past, such as Medal of Honor recipients Pfc. James LaBelle and Lance Cpl. Richard Anderson, Peralta – in his last fleeting moments of consciousness- reached out and pulled the grenade into his body. LaBelle fought on Iwo Jima and Anderson in Vietnam, both died saving their fellow Marines by smothering the blast of enemy grenades.

Peralta did the same for all of us in those rooms.

I watched in fear and horror as the other four Marines scrambled to the corners of the room and the majority of the blast was absorbed by Peralta’s now lifeless body. His selflessness left four other Marines with only minor injuries from smaller fragments of the grenade.

During the fight, a fire was sparked in the rear of the house. The flames were becoming visible through the door.

The decision was made by the Marine in charge of the squad to evacuate the injured Marines from the house, regroup and return to finish the fight and retrieve Peralta’s body.

We quickly ran for shelter, three or four houses up the street, in a house that had already been cleared and was occupied by the squad’s platoon.

As Staff Sgt. Jacob M. Murdock took a count of the Marines coming back, he found it to be one man short, and demanded to know the whereabouts of the missing Marine.

“Sergeant Peralta! He’s dead! He’s f—— dead,” screamed Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, a machine gunner with the squad, as he came around a corner. “He’s still in there. We have to go back.”

The ingrained code Marines have of never leaving a man behind drove the next few moments. Within seconds, we headed back to the house unknown what we may encounter yet ready for another round.

I don’t remember walking back down the street or through the gate in front of the house, but walking through the door the second time, I prayed that we wouldn’t lose another brother.

We entered the house and met no resistance. We couldn’t clear the rest of the house because the fire had grown immensely and the danger of the enemy’s weapons cache exploding in the house was increasing by the second.

Most of us provided security while Peralta’s body was removed from the house.

We carried him back to our rally point and upon returning were told that the other Marines who went to support us encountered and killed the three insurgents from inside the house.

Later that night, while I was thinking about the day’s somber events, Cpl. Richard A. Mason, an infantryman with Headquarters Platoon, who, in the short time I was with the company became a good friend, told me, “You’re still here, don’t forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today.”

As a combat correspondent, this is not only my job, but an honor.

Throughout Operation Al Fajr, we were constantly being told that we were making history, but if the books never mention this battle in the future, I’m sure that the day and the sacrifice that was made, will never be forgotten by the Marines who were there.

Oliver North also writes about him. Here is some of what he writes,

“It’s stuff you hear about in boot camp, about World War II and Tarawa Marines who won the Medal of Honor,” Lance Corporal Rob Rogers of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment told the Army Times. Corporal Rogers was describing the actions of his fellow Marine, Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a Mexican immigrant who enlisted in the Marine Corps the day he received his green card.

…Rafael Peralta who “saved the life of my son and every Marine in that room,” according to Garry Morrison the father of a Marine in Peralta’s unit - Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison.

On the morning of November 15, 2004, the men of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines awoke before sunrise and continued what they had been doing for seven days previously - cleansing the city of Fallujah of terrorists house by house.

At the fourth house they encountered that morning the Marines kicked in the door and “cleared” the front rooms, but then noticed a locked door off to the side that required inspection. Sgt. Rafael Peralta threw open the closed door, but behind it were three terrorists with AK-47s. Peralta was hit in the head and chest with multiple shots at close range.

Peralta’s fellow Marines had to step over his body to continue the shootout with the terrorists. As the firefight raged on, a “yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade,” as Lance Corporal Travis Kaemmerer described it, rolled into the room where they were all standing and came to a stop near Peralta’s body.

But Sgt. Rafael Peralta wasn’t dead - yet. This young immigrant of 25 years, who enlisted in the Marines when he received his green card, who volunteered for the front line duty in Fallujah, had one last act of heroism in him.

Sgt. Rafael Peralta was the polar opposite of Pablo Paredes, the Petty Officer who turned his back on his shipmates and mocked his commander in chief. Peralta was proud to serve his adopted country. In his parent’s home, on his bedroom walls hung only three items - a copy of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and his boot camp graduation certificate. Before he set out for Fallujah, he wrote to his 14-year old brother, “be proud of me, bro…and be proud of being an American.”

Not only can Rafael’s family be proud of him, but his fellow Marines are alive because of him. As Sgt. Rafael Peralta lay near death on the floor of a Fallujah terrorist hideout, he spotted the yellow grenade that had rolled next to his near-lifeless body. Once detonated, it would take out the rest of Peralta’s squad. To save his fellow Marines, Peralta reached out, grabbed the grenade, and tucked it under his abdomen where it exploded.

“Most of the Marines in the house were in the immediate area of the grenade,” Cpl. Kaemmerer said. “We will never forget the second chance at life that Sgt. Peralta gave us.”

Unfortunately, unlike Pablo Paredes, Sgt. Rafael Peralta will get little media coverage. He is unlikely to have books written about him or movies made about his extraordinarily selfless sacrifice. But he is likely to receive the Medal of Honor. And that Medal of Honor is likely to be displayed next to the only items that hung on his bedroom wall - the Constitution, Bill of Rights and his Boot Camp graduation certificate.

Yes, Virginia, there are still heroes in America, and Sgt. Rafael Peralta was one of them. It’s just too bad the media can’t recognize them.

Lt. Col. North (Ret.) is a nationally syndicated columnist and the author of the new FOX News/Regnery book, War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Here is some of what the San Diego Union Tribune wrote, with some background information,

News that a young man has fallen in combat is always hard for relatives to take, but Peralta’s passing hit his family especially hard. They were stunned by the death of his father in a freak accident three years ago.

Then the mother of Peralta’s fiancee died on the eve of the couple’s wedding day, and Maritca died days later from injuries in a truck accident.

And now this.

Rafael Peralta was a family man in the truest sense of the word. He not only wanted to get close to his friends, but to his friends’ families as well, especially that of his fiancee, Maritca Alvarez. The Alvarez and Peralta families had blended together since the couple met in a Tijuana nightclub about two years ago, so both households are suffering his loss.

No one can forget Rafael’s recurring dream about Maritca, who came to him in his sleep and said she was going to take him with her.

‘He was ready to die’

Peralta was also a Marine’s Marine, from the military tattoo on his arm to the medals, commendations and plaques with the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence posted around his bed at his family’s home in the San Diego neighborhood of Webster.

He wanted to enlist in the Corps right after graduating from Morse High School in 1997. But since he was a Mexican citizen, he had to wait until 2000, after he got his green card. His father, Rafael Peralta Rios, had been proud to become an American citizen. Peralta felt the same way, following his father’s lead a year or two ago.

His mother, Rosa, 47, cried and his oldest sister, Icela Donald, fingered his blue rosary beads Friday as they talked with a reporter about his last phone calls from Iraq. His sister translated for his mother, who speaks only Spanish.

“He said he was ready to die,” said Donald, 24. “He had reconciled with God and (he wanted Rosa) to be strong. She had to take care of my little sister and brother. He would always tell my mom that there was a possibility that he might not come back.”

A knock on the door

In the days before Peralta died, his sister and mother felt something was wrong. He hadn’t responded to Donald’s e-mails for two weeks and he hadn’t called his mother since before the Nov. 2 election, when he predicted President Bush was going to win.

At 4:15 p.m. Monday, Ricardo opened his family’s door to four Marines wearing their dress blues and white hats. Ricardo knew why they were there before 1st Lt. Torrance Chaplin had said a word.

Ricardo called his mother and then told Chaplin his mother should be back from work in about 45 minutes. Chaplin, who waited in the car for her to arrive, saw Ricardo through a window, banging on the wall and crying.

Rosa Peralta left her housekeeping job early to pick up her 12-year-old daughter, Karen, from an after-school program. Rosa was so upset she could barely drive. She, too, knew in her heart why the Marines had come. She walked right past them into the house, sending a friend out to meet the Marines on the walkway.

“Uno momento,” the friend said, giving Rosa time to brace herself.

Rosa was seated and weeping when Chaplin’s group came in five minutes later. Ricardo was standing near Karen, who was on the floor, crying. As Chaplin told Rosa through a translator that her son had died, Rosa burst out sobbing and clutched at her friend.

That night, Rosa tried to call Donald, who lives in a small town in Florida with her husband and baby daughter. But the daughter’s phone wasn’t working, so Rosa asked the Sheriff’s Department there to personally tell her that her mother was trying to make contact.

Donald had been praying all night that her brother was safe. After a deputy came to her door at 1 a.m., she knew that “something was going to be really, really bad.” Her husband had to persuade her to go to the station and call her mother.

The next day, the family received the two letters from Rafael postmarked Nov. 7. He’d never written to them before.

Karen read her letter right away. She felt sad, confused and scared that they might have to bury her brother tomorrow, her 13th birthday.

“Be good and do your best at school. Don’t be lazy,” Rafael wrote to Karen in Spanish, telling her how proud he felt that she was learning karate. “I want you to be a woman who knows how to defend yourself against men. Keep it up, little sister.”

Ricardo couldn’t bring himself to open his letter until Wednesday.

“I wanted to read it the day that I got it, but I just couldn’t,” the soft-spoken boy said.

Rafael told Ricardo about all the things he could look forward to, such as going to high school and the prom. And no matter what happened, the Marine wrote, Ricardo shouldn’t feel sad or lonely. He encouraged his family members to take care of one another in his absence.

“Just think about God and we will all be together again,” he wrote. “If anything happens to me, just remember I lived my life to the fullest and I’m happy with what I lived.”

Prepared for battle

Rafael was deployed overseas when his father died in September 2001. Peralta Rios, a diesel mechanic for Waste Management in El Cajon, was working under a truck when it rolled over and pinned him.
Rosa was devastated.

No one could replace her husband, but she and the children began to look to Rafael, the oldest son, to be the man of the house. He gladly adopted the role, even while he trained at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Camp Pendleton, and again 1½ years later when he returned to the depot as a training officer.

As a Marine for a country at war, Peralta was eager to get to battle. He transferred to the base in Kaneohe, Hawaii, in November 2003 and re-enlisted for four more years in April.

Accounts vary about how long he served in Iraq, but he seems to have been there for at least a month.

“This was a Marine that was not nervous at all,” said Cpl. Stephen Lara, 22, of Lubbock, Texas, who met Rafael about two years ago at San Diego’s MCRD. “If anything, that’s the only place he would have wanted to be.”

Reunited

Rafael was a friendly guy with light brown eyes that attracted many of his sister Icela’s friends. He wasn’t all that tall, but he was strong. He lifted weights, played soccer and loved to dance.
He finished elementary and junior high school in Tijuana, then moved to San Diego to live with Ricardo and Karen’s godparents and attend high school. For years, his father had commuted from Tijuana to San Diego for work.

Rafael briefly attended Montgomery High School, then transferred to Morse High School. After graduating, he attended San Diego City College while doing a stint in the California Conservation Corps.

At night, he liked to drive down to Tijuana and go clubbing. Maritca Alvarez, who was four years his senior, met him at a nightclub there. She didn’t know how to dance very well, so he taught her.

Rafael grew close to the Alvarez family and felt like a brother to Maritca’s sister Marisol. Maritca’s father was also named Rafael, and when Marisol had a son, he got the same name.

Maritca nicknamed Rafael “pollito,” or baby bird, and got a tattoo on her ankle of the cartoon character Tweetie Bird, with Rafael’s initials.

In December 2003, Maritca bought a one-way ticket to join Rafael in Hawaii, where they were to marry. They planned to eventually move in with Rosa back in Webster.

While Maritca was on the plane, her sister left a message on her cell phone, asking her to come home right away because their mother had died. Maritca had some trouble getting a quick return ticket, so Rafael waited with her at the airport until her plane took off the next day.

Because their mother was from Mexico, Maritca and Marisol traveled there to bury her. Maritca was a passenger in a truck when it stopped suddenly and rolled over, crushing her underneath.

For four days, while Maritca was hooked up to life-support machines in the hospital, Marisol was unable to reach Rafael. His number was not recorded in Maritca’s cell phone because, presumably, she knew it by heart.

By the time Rafael learned that Maritca had died, she was already buried in Michoacan, next to her mother. Rafael and his mother flew down to visit the graves, carrying a bouquet of white lilies, Maritca’s favorite flowers.

After his father had died, Rafael celebrated his loving memory by getting a tattoo on the back of one shoulder. After Maritca died, he dedicated the same place on the opposite side to a tattoo in her memory.

“He told my mom she was going to be in the middle,” Donald said.

Rafael and Marisol had stayed in touch by phone after Maritca’s death. The last time they spoke, he was in Iraq. He said he wanted to visit Maritca’s grave again.

And again, he mentioned he was still having the dream – that Maritca said she was coming to get him.

I remember talking to my dad a few years ago about what this country means to him. My dad came here when he was around 20 years-old. He never went to school in Mexico and often brings up the fact that he came here with only the clothes on his back and without the ability to even write his own name. My dad, along with my aunts and uncles, are from Guerrero, Mexico, a state that is high in poverty, even by Mexico standards. He isn’t rich by any means, and has worked as a diesel mechanic most of his life, even losing a leg in a work accident.

When I asked him what this country meant to him, my dad turned around and said to me in a very serious tone, “Si el presidente de los Estados Unidos me necesitara hoy, yo iria, asi sin pierna, por lo tanto que me ha dado este pais”. Translated into English, he said, ‘If the president of the United States needed me today, I’d go even with a missing leg because of all this country has done for me’.

I know several immigrants like my father who love this country as if it were ’su propia patria’ and who understand what it means to be American. So please, remember these immigrants, and especially Sgt. Rafael Peralta, the next time you hear someone from the right or the left talk about immigrants as if they are nothing but leaches.

I don’t know if I am allowed to say this, not being a Marine, but Semper Fi Sgt. Rafael Peralta and may God Bless you and your family.