David Bellavia was at home in Buffalo, New York, where he lives with his wife Deanna and three children, when he got the call from the Pentagon last December.
All he had been told was to expect a phone call from a senior member of the department, not exactly a lot to work with. Bellavia had left the Army in 2005 after serving in Iraq and insists he had no idea what it might be about.
He had maintained a prominent public profile and had powerful Republican political connections, but most had thought that his Silver Star medal was the highest award he would receive.
“You know, that could have been anything from … ‘We’d like you to give a talk to an Army base’ or ‘We found a Zippo in Fallujah with your name on it, would you like it back?’” Bellavia said this month. “I didn’t think it was anything of any significance at all.”
The call had already been canceled four times since he first got word in October that this person wanted to get in touch. Now an Army colonel confirmed it would come in five minutes.
“Hi, David, this is Madeline from President Trump’s office. How are you?”
Bellavia, who grew up in Lyndonville, New York, as the youngest of four brothers, was flabbergasted. “I had no idea that that senior member of the DoD was the senior member of the DoD, and the commander in chief, and it was quite humbling,” Bellavia said.
He recalled just telling himself not to swear. “Uhh, I’m … ahhh. I am fff. I am, I am doing all right,” Bellavia said.
Trump came on the line, asking him if he knew what he was being recommended for.
“I am sitting here with the vice president and some other people, and we are going to bestow upon you the Congressional Medal of Honor for your great bravery,” Trump said. “They just told me the story, and I had heard the story previously. As you know, it’s the highest honor of our country.”
Bellavia, who enlisted in the Army as an infantryman in 1999, wondered if this was an elaborate joke. Was some Army guy good at impersonations taking him for a ride?
It wasn’t. A decade and a half since winning the Silver Star for his actions in the second battle of Fallujah, Bellavia’s Silver Star will be upgraded to the Medal of Honor Tuesday in a ceremony at the White House.
Bellavia had moved on to a new life as a civilian by the time he received word he was going to become the first living Iraq War veteran to receive the Medal of Honor.
While he wasn’t in uniform anymore, Bellavia maintained an active role in national security and political debates as a writer and speaker. He acted as an advocate for Iraq War veterans at a time when the country was wracked with doubt about the war and ran for Congress as a Republican in 2008, 2011, and 2012.
In 2007, Bellavia published a book, House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, in which he gave a harrowing account of his single-handed storming of a houseful of insurgents in Fallujah on Nov. 10, 2004. The book jacket stated that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor.
In a CBS interview the same year, Bellavia criticized the lack of valor awards given out to Iraq War veterans compared to those in other conflicts. He said his award was “embarrassing” because so many others were not given recognition. Bellavia called for an overhaul of the system.
“We need every branch of service on the same page, and obviously, we need someone from the United States Congress to supervise and oversight what’s happening right now. It’s extremely personal, only because of the fact that my best friends have bled and died. I’ve lost 36 brothers in one year.”
The CBS program identified him as a “Medal of Honor nominee” and stated that he had been recommended for the Medal of Honor but had been given a Silver Star instead.
While he never won office, Bellavia helped co-found Vets for Freedom, a conservative political advocacy group, whose leaders included Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth.
Bellavia called publicly for the Trump administration to install Hegseth as secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2016. Hegseth didn’t get the job but has emerged as a confidant of Trump’s on military issues, reportedly persuading him to consider pardoning several veterans convicted of or charged with war crimes.
It is not known whether Hegseth personally lobbied on Bellavia’s behalf. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican and former Marine officer who is close to Hegseth, pushed for Bellavia’s award to be upgraded. In a 2013 news article, Hegseth stated: “So the question is, how is the system broken? Because it is.
“Our troops don’t just all of a sudden commit courageous acts at a date certain and just because it’s Afghanistan.” He added, using a phrase that had been the title of Bellavia’s book: “And in Iraq I would argue that you had a lot more house-to-house fighting.”
The same article quoted Bellavia, now a co-host of a radio talk show on WBEN-AM in Buffalo, saying: “I think the Obama administration has actually done a really good job of awarding more people. I think the biggest problem, and I get this all the time with Iraq vets, Iraq is the ‘bad war’ and Afghanistan is the ‘good war.’ And we basically can no longer mention the stories of Iraq.”
For many of Bellavia’s superiors and comrades, his upgrade to the Medal of Honor was a long time coming. Col. Doug Walter, Bellavia’s company commander, said he remembered many acts of bravery and valor from the battle, but there was something “a little bit different” about Bellavia’s case.
“I felt like at the end of it I knew the story perhaps better than anyone, because I interviewed every single one to make sure we got it right,” Walter told the Washington Examiner. “Because I did want to make sure that the award rose to the level that it did. And so there’s no question that that story in particular kind of stood out and I guess required a little bit of extra effort, a little more time to make sure it [was] documented correctly.”
Being recommended for the nation’s highest award for military valor is no small undertaking. Eyewitness statements, a formal narrative, and any recordings or visual data are all collected during the process. Investigators will even do a terrain and weather analysis and determine where exactly people were standing at the time of the event.
“And they put it all together in a packet. There’s of course a form they fill out, because it’s the military, there’s a form,” Laura Jowdy, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s archivist and collections manager, told the Washington Examiner. “And then they put together all this evidence, and they have the sworn statements with it. And all this information then goes back to what’s called the awards branch, and the awards branch kind of oversees the whole process to make sure all the Ts [are crossed] and Is are dotted.”
After that, the recommendation must go through the chain of command, all the way to the secretary of defense. Only after that will it go to the president for final approval.
This investigation was made more difficult due to the losses of his senior enlisted man, Command Sgt. Maj. Steven Faulkenburg, company commander Capt. Sean Sims, and the company executive officer, Lt. Edward Iwan, during the battle. Army officials did, however, have one useful piece of evidence: a video recording of Bellavia storming the house.
Time magazine journalist Michael Ware was embedded with Bellavia’s platoon. He followed Bellavia as he entered the pitch-black house to take out the dug-in insurgents. While the footage is obscured by darkness, Bellavia can be heard going back into the house and exchanging fire with the enemy. The video was a key piece of evidence in Bellavia’s consideration for an award.
“I’ve seen a lot of combat, and what David Bellavia did was an act of valor that distinguished itself above almost anything else I’d ever seen,” Ware told the Washington Examiner.
Bellavia’s recommendation eventually made it to the desk of Lt. Col. Pete Newell, commanding Task Force 2-2, Bellavia’s unit.
“You’re essentially writing history with that award. And for a large part, you want to make sure you get the circumstances right,” Newell, who retired as a full colonel, told the Washington Examiner. “There is a point of validating the detail and ensuring that when Congress and the president of the United States take their signature to something that in fact it is an accurate portrayal of what happened.”
Newell ultimately recommended Bellavia for the Distinguished Service Cross, which ranks just below the Medal of Honor. He felt this decision gave Army leadership the choice to upgrade it if they saw fit, given no one to that point had written a Medal of Honor recommendation resulting from the Iraq War. Bellavia’s Distinguished Service Cross recommendation would be the only recommendation for an award of that level Newell wrote during his entire career.
“I’ll say it this way: I think that he was treated poorly. And I don’t know whose fault it was, but the fact that his Distinguished Service Cross went from somebody deciding it really ought to be a Medal of Honor to somebody deciding to downgrade to a Silver Star was horrendous,” Newell said. “So I think this is long past due.”
Maj. Gen. John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said that he had recommended more than a Silver Star at the time. He said that Task Force 2-2 did a “phenomenal job” in Iraq, and Bellavia’s upgrade reflected that.
“I think that the Army’s done it right, this is a good call,” Batiste told the Washington Examiner. “Absolutely earned and deserved.”
There have been 3,506 recipients of the Medal of Honor. 17 were awarded for actions in Afghanistan but only five for actions in Iraq. Some 470 were awarded for actions in World War II. The low number of awards in Iraq drew criticism from veterans, including Bellavia himself, who believed there were many Iraq cases that deserved recognition despite the unpopularity of the war.
“The one major fact i keep going back to that blows my mind is not a single living person received the Medal of Honor for the Iraq War,” Hunter said in 2017.
In 2016, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ordered a review of more than 1,300 valor awards, including Bellavia’s. Approximately 58 awards have been upgraded since, five of them to the Medal of Honor.
Bellavia praised fellow Iraq War veterans and credited his comrades for the award.
“[T]he Iraq War veteran has served and surpassed, at times, the highest standards of American warrior tradition among any generation. We have nothing to apologize for,” he said at the Pentagon. “I’m not here to change anyone’s mind, I’m here to tell you that there are men and women who served their country in Iraq. And … it is one of the honors of my life to be a part of that.”
