Nearly 80 years after being wounded by a German mortar while fighting on the Mussolini Canal in Italy, the US Army First Sergeant, Marvin Cornett, posed proudly in his immaculate uniform, this time adorned with the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star .
Cornett’s daughter, Jan Mendoza, proudly watched as two men in uniform, a quarter of her father’s age, placed medals on her chest in a quiet ceremony in California this month.
Mendoza sighed with relief. His father is 99 years old and receiving that well-deserved honor seemed like a race against time. Hundreds of members of his generation die every day, along with their stories of unimaginable heroism.
Cornett himself never considered his actions during World War II worth recognizing.
“He still doesn’t believe he deserves it,” Mendoza said. “He really thinks those who haven’t returned are the ones who really deserve it.”
One of them was standing next to him when the mortar fell. While Cornett, then a soldier in the army, survived, his injuries robbed him of taste and smell, leaving him with a constant buzz that kept him from forgetting the horrors of the battlefield.
“Thank you for the incredible example you failed to set,” Major General Chris Donahue told Cornett in a video chat at the ceremony. “We can never thank you enough.”
Donahue is the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the illustrious unit Cornett belonged to when parachuting into battle.
The division, which played a vital role in the Normandy invasion and is proud of its history, wanted to do the right thing when it learned of Cornett and the lack of his medals.
As a child, Mendoza did not listen to her father who spoke a lot about his experiences in the war, even though he continued his military career after the conflict. After being injured, he was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was a skydiving instructor. He later became an army recruiter and retired as a first-class sergeant.