Navy Corpsman Joshua T. Chiarini greets his friend, Elisha Schofield, of Coventry, at his parents’ home in Coventry yesterday, where he was getting ready for ceremonies at the State House.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer

Years from now, when the images of the State House ceremony fade from Joshua T. Chiarini’s memory — the Navy band playing in the gallery, his father’s lips quivering, the weight of the medal tapping at his heart — the combat medic from Coventry may remember best his moment of valor with the words of a bleeding Marine.

“It was the greatest thing anybody ever said to me,” Chiarini recalled for the hundreds of people gathered in his honor yesterday inside the House chamber.

“He said, ‘Doc, when I saw you coming through the smoke, I knew things were going to be OK.’ ”

On a day when the exploits of a baseball team were being celebrated in heroic terms, a Marine Corps brigadier general, his own chest clinking with medals, pinned the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award given for bravery, onto the uniform of Joshua Chiarini.

In so doing, Chiarini, who enlisted in the Navy in 2000 three months after graduating from Coventry High School, joined the ranks of Douglas MacArthur, Chuck Yeager, George Patton, Oliver North and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, all of whom earned the same distinction for extraordinary heroism.

“I was just doing my job is all,” Chiarini said prior to the ceremony, in between accepting congratulations from U.S. senators and a governor. “It was a pretty exciting day.”

Feb. 10, 2006, found Chiarini in a Marine convoy of four Humvees outside the village of Hit in Al Anbar Province, one of the most violent regions in Iraq.

It was Chiarini’s third tour of duty with the 1st Platoon, 2nd Marine Division. He had seen plenty of firefights, treated more than 100 injured Marines, and been spared any of them dying in his hands. That could not be said, however, of some of the civilians he had treated who had been caught in the middle of gun battles.

Chiarini’s convoy was one of more than a dozen out that day hunting down insurgents and protecting supply roads through the region. For most of the Marines with him, it was their first tour.

Around 11 a.m. the front Humvee struck a roadside bomb. The damaged truck managed to pull up about 100 yards out of the “kill zone” and four Marines and an interpreter got out to inspect the damage.

That’s when the insurgents, watching from about 550 yards away from a cluster of buildings, detonated a second and much larger explosion near where the Marines stood.

Chiarini, the squad’s only medic, watched from the third Humvee in the convoy.

“After the initial blast went off, I was trying to get my vehicle to go up there,” he said, but the driver hesitated. “After the second blast went off, I just jumped off. I said, ‘Screw it’, I’m going.”

With his medical bag and M-16, Chiarini ran the 100 yards ahead to the injured men while the insurgents fired down at him. One Marine, his arm dangling, screamed: “Is my arm still there?”

Chiarini told him “there was still some of it there.” The Marine was in shock but was able to walk. Chiarini pointed him back to the second Humvee. Another Marine had been blinded and was shooting wildly in every direction. “I got him turned around and shooting in the right direction.” Then Chiarini turned his attention to getting three other men back to the safety of the second Humvee.

Chiarini made three separate trips, each time under enemy fire, to pull the men back to safety. Along the way he picked up one of the Marine’s M-16s (he had left his at the burning Humvee) and began returning fire.

After about 10 or 15 minutes, Chiarini said, reinforcements arrived.

“They took care of my Marines and got them out.”

Chiarini stayed and kept firing and kept fighting until the firefight ended a few minutes later.

“It was a pretty crazy day,” he said.

In presenting the Silver Star to Chiarini, Marine Brig. Gen. David H. Berger said Chiarini displayed a type of courage virtually impossible for people on the sidelines of war to understand.

“He reacted the way he did for one simple reason: to take care of the Marine at his right and the Marine to his left. Simple as that…He would not let his fellow warriors down. He used himself to protect his comrades. We can not ask of anything more.”

Chiarini’s commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Andrew Smith, thanked Chiarini’s attending four grandparents, three sisters — one of whom served in Iraq with Army — and his parents, Linda and Thomas Chiarini, for raising and loving such a noble man. And for others like him, he said, who “look down the muzzle of the enemy because their nation asks them to.”

tmooney@projo.com