WASHINGTON D.C (WKBW) — Tuesday will be a day David Bellavia will always remember. He will be receiving an honor for a day he'll never forget.
“Were it not for David Bellavia. I would not be sitting here today,” said Colin Fitts, a retired Army Sargent First Class.
It's not easy to get a soldier to brag about their accomplishments. Even more so, when that accomplishment warrants the highest honor in country, the Medal of Honor.
“I always just considered my award just being able to come home,” said Bellavia.
But the people who he saved, tell the story well. A story, about a man who risked everything for his fellow soldiers.
It was in the second battle of Fallujah in November of 2004. Staff Sergeant Bellavia and his platoon were going house to house, looking for the enemy. Inside one house, they found them. It was an ambush.
“We were engaged by multiple insurgents. We ended up being pinned down under fire. And we couldn't get out. We couldn't do anything,” added Fitts.
“To protect the platoon and the members of his squad David Bellavia had to go back in, to a darkened nightmare of a house, where he knew there were at least five or six suicidal jihadis waiting,” said Michael Ware, a journalist embedded with Bellavia’s platoon.
When the Batavia resident is receiving this award, Tuesday, he hopes it reminds everyone of all that the military does for our country.
“This represents so many different people. It represents my entire team and my entire unit. And it says that we have no idea what veterans are going through. We see them at the store. You see them wearing a cap from Vietnam or Korea or wherever they were. We have no idea what they went through,” said Bellavia.
