What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?  I'm thankful that humility is not dead. 

Common thought seems to be that confidence and humility are two separate and incompatible characteristics.  Not in my book.    Not only does humility not negate confidence and confidence does not negate humility, but real confidence is produced by humility's addition. 

Real confidence is quiet...it's simply a knowledge, a warm sense that one is a pretty good person and/or pretty good at what he or she does.  Indeed, in its best and most powerful incarnation, real confidence is an alloy of confidence and humility much like bronze is an alloy of copper and tin.

You've read or seen this story I'm sure...

In 2007, Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta's platoon was on an offensive in the brutal, enemy-riddled death-trap known as the Konregal Valley in Afghanistan just miles from the Pakistan border.  On the last night of their operation, they were ambushed by twelve Taliban soldiers.  The ambush had been perfectly executed.

Ominous chatter had been heard via radios in the days leading up to the attack that the enemy wanted an American body "this time."  Killing the Americans wasn't enough, they wanted a body.  For a moment they had one. 

While pulling one soldier to safety after he had been hit in the helmet by enemy fire, Giunta was hit twice himself in the chest.  His body armor saved him.

He peered ahead through the hail of enemy fire and saw an American soldier being carried off by two Taliban fighters.  Without regard for his own well being, Giunta sprinted forward directly into the teeth of the Taliban's onslaught to rescue his fellow soldier.  

Giunta fired constantly as he closed the gap.  He hit one of the enemy soldiers carrying his comrade and down the enemy went.  The other took off running and Giunta came quickly to the side of Sgt. Joshua Brennan, who was mortally wounded and would die in surgery later that night.  But he would not die in enemy hands. 

For his bravery, risking almost certain death to rescue a fellow soldier from the hands of the Taliban, Giunta was awarded the Medal of Honor.  It was bestowed upon him by President Obama in a White House ceremony last week.

In an interview with Lara Logan on 60 Minutes, Giunta said that what he did was not extraordinary at all.  He said he was in a position to do something and simply did what any soldier would have done if they had been there.  He was clearly uncomfortable with the attention and said so.

With a tip of his hat to Brennan and other soldiers lost in the fight he said, "I have never given everything."

In this world of self promotion, where so many scream loudly so as to be heard above the din, where that irritating squeaky wheel seems to get the grease all too often, this was like salve to my soul.  A soldier's duty...in his mind no more extraordinary and no more special than any other's.

And with Giunta it seems so genuine.    

At the end of the interview Logan asked Giunta what kind of soldier he is. 

"I'm average," said Giunta.  "I'm mediocre." 

"This is the single highest honor the military can give to one of its own," Logan protested. "It comes straight from the President of the United States himself.  That's pretty good for a mediocre soldier."

At this Giunta perked up. "Just think how good the great soldiers are," he said with a slight smile.

Long live humility.