Honors Bittersweet For Army Specialist

The 82nd Airborne Division on Thursday was on parade for their commander in chief, who has asked so much - perhaps too much - of them. Beneath all that spit and polish were some very raw emotions.

"It sucks," said Spc. Christopher Corriveau.

"What do you mean?" CBS News national security correspondent David Martin asked.

"It sucks that the rest of my team is dead," Corriveau said.

The president pinned on Corriveau Thursday a Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor.

You'd think the 23-year-old soldier would feel covered in glory.

"You're having trouble talking about it even now, aren't you?" Martin asked.

"Yeah," Corriveau said.

In August 2007, Corriveau's sniper team was ambushed and outnumbered 10-to-one. He fought his way out and then now has been honored by the president.

His two buddies, Sgt. Joshua Morley and Spec. Tracy Willis, didn't make it.

"The three of us - me, Morley and Willis - that was our team," he said. "Any one of those guys would have taken a bullet for me and likewise for them. I would have taken a bullet for any of them."

"So these were your best buddies?" Martin asked.

"Yeah, they were some of the best friends I ever had," Corriveau said.

All the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony can't change that.

Is he at least proud of what he did?

"I wasn't thinking clearly," he said. "I almost wanted to die that day on the roof with my brothers."

To us, Corriveau and the rest of the soldiers honored Thursday, two of them posthumously so that their families received the medals, are heroes.

But that's one of war's many myths.

"Do you feel like a hero?" Martin asked.

"No. I did my job," he said.

Corriveau's unit goes back to Iraq this fall, but he won't be with them. He's getting out of the Army and plans to go to college.