Cpl. Carlos Gomez-Perez

Second Battalion, First Marine Regiment (2/1), First Marine Divison

Echo Company:  WARHAMMER

(From MICHAEL CORONADO of The Orange County Register)

CAMP PENDLETON Ca - The armor-piercing round ripped through the right shoulder of then-Lance Cpl. Carlos Gomez-Perez, leaving a fist-sized hole.

Maybe it was the adrenaline, but the stocky, young Marine felt no pain during the April 2004 firefight.

One floor below him, as Iraqi insurgents fired relentlessly, Gomez-Perez could hear his fellow Marines shouting.

The El Cajon resident propped up his M-16 and pulled the trigger despite his bloodied chest, his thick, wide frame keeping his shoulder intact. He lobbed a grenade with his good arm.

Beside him, Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin, 21, wounded by gunfire, was losing his fight for life. Below him, the shouting continued.

"All I heard was screaming and screaming," Gomez-Perez said.

Gomez-Perez decided he would die before he would be taken prisoner and made a bold move to lead his fellow Marines, several wounded, against their attackers.

His actions that day would earn him the Silver Star for heroism in battle, awarded at a ceremony Wednesday.

Gomez-Perez was challenged in life at an early age.

When he was 9, he ran across the I-805 Freeway in San Diego County with his mother and two sisters in tow, crossing illegally into the country - a journey that started in Mexico City. By 12 he started working to earn money for the family.

His mother, Blanca Gomez, a custodian, said that on their journey north the family waded across a channel filled with water using plastic trash bags to stay dry.

"That was a very sad day because we were uncertain of what would happen," she said.

That was 15 years ago.

On Wednesday, Gomez watched a formation of Marines pay honor to her son, a fire team leader for Company E with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and listened to a general describe how a country is thankful for her boy.

"We have a true hero here," Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski told Blanca Gomez - now a legal resident - and the rest of his family. Gomez-Perez became a U.S. citizen in 2004.

Now, discharged from the Marines, he says his shoulder still hurts and finding work is difficult.

At the ceremony Wednesday at the seaside base, Gomez-Perez wore a Texas flag in his coat pocket, a tribute to Austin, who died that day from his wounds despite being revived twice, Gomez-Perez said.

"It runs through my head every day," said Gomez-Perez, who is indifferent about receiving the award. "I really don't know what it means."

Instead, he remembers the day, the fighting, the wounded and his actions.

"What could I have done differently?" he said he asks himself. "Austin - he's the one who died because I couldn't save him."