Congratulations Cpl. Tibor Rubin

I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade

TIBOR "Ted" Rubin knows what it's like to slowly starve to death, how lice itch when crawling over skin and how giving up on life can seem easier than fighting for it.

Nazi guards made sure Rubin understood despair at the age of 13. A Hungarian Jew, he was forced into the Mauthausen Concentration Camp toward the end of World War II. But Rubin defied odds: He survived. After the war he moved to New York, and eventually joined the same Army that liberated him from hell on earth.

From the horror of the Holocaust arose a bravery that few can match. Rubin went on to fight in the Korean War and was taken prisoner by the Chinese communists. This time, he breathed life into his fellow captives, who were dying at the rate of 40 a day in the winter of 1950-1951.
"He saved a lot of GI's lives. He gave them the courage to go on living when a lot of guys didn't make it," said SGT Leo Cormier, a fellow POW. "He saved my life when I could have laid in a ditch and died -- I was nothing but flesh and bones."

Rubin was nominated for the Medal of Honor four times by grateful comrades. A medal he might otherwise have received at age 23 is scheduled to be draped over his neck by President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony Sept. 23. While most military decorations are awarded for a single act, Rubin's was earned by courage that withstood battle on the front lines, and then thrived in the face of death for two and a half years.

"People ask, 'How the hell did you get through all that?'" said Rubin, now 76. "I can't answer, but I figured whatever I did, I was never going to make it out alive."