Slain Patchogue SEAL receives highest honor

Two years after his death in Afghanistan, Lt. Michael P. Murphy, who grew up in Patchogue and joined the elite Navy SEALs after college, has been awarded the nation's highest battlefield award, the Medal of Honor, for a valiant attempt to save the lives of comrades that cost him his own.

"This tells the country what we already know about Michael -- that he was a hero," his father, Daniel Murphy, said after receiving the news Thursday that the White House had made the announcement of the award shortly after noon Thursday.

The president will present the medal -- a star-shaped bronze emblem suspended from a sky-blue ribbon -- to Murphy's family on Oct. 22 at a ceremony in the White House's historic Blue Room.

Murphy, 29 at the time of his death, becomes the first Medal of Honor winner for combat service in Afghanistan, and the first sailor recipient since the Vietnam War. He is the 18th Long Islander to win the award. Four U.S. Army soldiers from Long Island won the honor for service in Vietnam, where Daniel Murphy served and was awarded the Purple Heart for battlefield wounds.

Daniel Murphy, a law clerk in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, said he learned of the president's decision on Aug. 27, but had agreed to keep silent until an announcement was officially made.

"The family is absolutely thrilled by the president's announcement," Murphy said. "I think it is a public recognition of what we knew about Michael, of his intensity, his focus, his devout loyalty to home and family, his country and especially to his SEAL teammates and the SEAL community."

Murphy is credited with putting his life in danger in an effort to save the lives of three of his subordinates during a fierce firefight in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border in June 2005.

That month, Murphy and three other SEALs -- Petty Officer Matt Axelson, 29, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25 -- were inserted by helicopter onto a remote mountaintop near the border. They were four men on a secret mission to track a high-ranking Taliban warlord, Newsday reported last May. But they were discovered first by an Afghan goat herder who stumbled upon their hiding place in a mountainside forest. Not long after, the four SEALs were surrounded by dozens of armed insurgents, and a fierce battle ensued.

The lone survivor of the incident, Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, 29, of Texas, has called Murphy, the team's leader, "an iron-souled warrior of colossal, almost unbelievable courage." According to Luttrell's account, as told to Navy superiors and in a recently published book, Murphy displayed "an extreme act of valor" when he ran into the open -- and suffered a bullet wound when he did -- in a last-ditch attempt to call for help and save his fellow SEALs.

That call brought tragedy instead, when a rescue helicopter sent to save them was shot down, killing all 16 U.S. troops aboard, including eight Navy SEALs.

Murphy, Axelson and Dietz were killed as they fled down the mountainside in an effort to elude their pursuers.

"Lt. Mike Murphy was a valued teammate, professional warrior, and fearless leader," said Rear Adm. Joe Kernan, chief of the Naval Special Warfare Command, in a prepared statement. "We are humbled by his courageous and selfless actions and this award is a testament to the man he was."

As one of fewer than 2,400 men serving in the closely-knit SEAL community, Murphy was a member of the most elite group in the military. To join the secretive, highly trained unit -- whose commandos are trained to arrive at targets by submarine, over land or via aircraft -- men must submit themselves to months of grueling training designed to weed out all but the most determined fighters.

The Medal of Honor is bestowed by the president upon military personnel who have distinguished themselves "conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in action against an enemy of the United States."

The act "must have been one of personal bravery or self-sacrifice so conspicuous as to clearly distinguish the individual above his or her comrades."

To date, 3,462 soldiers, sailors, Marines or airmen have received the Medal of Honor since it was initiated by Congress in 1863.

Interviewed at an afternoon news conference yesterday in Manhattan, Murphy's parents described their feelings as "bittersweet."

Murphy's mother, Maureen, said she is consoled by the fact that her son will be remembered by how he lived his final hours.

"It's almost like it's a snapshot of how he lived his life," said Maureen Murphy, of Patchogue. "We know how he lived his life, but now the nation knows."

Daniel Murphy, who said in the Newsday story last May that he did not want his son to follow his footsteps and enlist in the military, said he was proud of what his son had accomplished.

"I have no regrets," Daniel Murphy said, "except that we lost him."