Anonymous source

Stop and look closely at the young Marine officer climbing over the concrete seawall on that wooden ladder. He has less than two minutes left to live. His name is First Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez, twenty-five years old, the proud son of Spanish immigrants from Tampa, Florida, and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. On September 15, 1950, during the amphibious landing at Red Beach in Inchon, Lopez was the very first man in his platoon up the scaling ladder into enemy fire. A combat photographer snapped this frame as Lopez vaulted over the wall with his M1 carbine in his left hand, leading the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines forward. Moments after this shutter clicked, Lopez crawled up to a North Korean concrete pillbox that was pinning his Marines down on the beach. He pulled the pin on a hand grenade and cocked his right arm back to hurl it through the firing slit. At that exact split second, a burst of automatic fire tore straight through his right shoulder and chest. Lopez dropped into the trench, bleeding heavily, while his live, primed grenade rolled loose near the boots of his own Marines. His shattered right arm was paralyzed; try as he might, he could not lift it high enough to throw the grenade over the wall. With only seconds left on the fuse, Lopez refused to shout for someone else to grab it. Instead, he swung his broken right arm in a low arc across the dirt, swept the hissing grenade underneath his own chest, and pressed his body tight over the blast. Every single Marine around him walked away alive. Whenever someone asks what American leadership looks like, show them the young man at the top of that ladder.