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<p>One man slithered across an open field toward a manned tank, climbed atop and chucked in a grenade, saving his exposed company.</p>
<p>Two others held their ground — each alone — firing into enemy thickets while fellow troops escaped and until the heroes, inevitably, were killed.</p>
<p>For decades, those three soldiers, and many like them, were denied the U.S. military’s highest decoration, veterans’ advocates claim, simply due to the last names on their uniforms: Gomez, Pena and Vera.</p>