CHAMPAIGN – On April 14, 2004, Lucas Munds was having a very bad day.

Today, he gets a Bronze Star for saving that day.

The Champaign man, 23, was on his second tour of duty in Iraq when his platoon came under fire "10 feet from the Syrian border."

The Bronze Star citation was dated June 10, 2005, and is only now being awarded to Munds in a Chicago ceremony.

It marks the day when Munds, who had volunteered as a sniper along with a friend from Texas, Matt Thompson, was trapped on a rooftop under heavy fire.

Thompson was shot through both legs, Munds recalls.

The citation includes this description:

"As Lance Corporal Munds low-crawled to assist the wounded Marine, the volume and accuracy of the fire significantly increased. Discovering the Marine's critical injury, Munds delivered accurate and lethal fire on the enemy, enabling other Marines to move the wounded Marine to safety. ... As the support vehicles arrived, he left a covered position to provide suppressive fire, which enabled the successful evacuation of the wounded Marine."

Munds joined the Marines as soon as he graduated from Centennial High School. He says two friends had the idea before him, one of them being Nathaniel Moore, who died in a helicopter crash in Iraq in 2005.

"Nathan went first, and that convinced me," Munds said.

He doesn't consider himself a patriot as much as "responsible."

"I'm appreciative of what we've been given here," he said. "I want to take care of what we've been given."

In his first Iraq tour, Munds served in Javelin Platoon, training on anti-tank weapons.

He was supposed to go to Japan, but went instead to Kuwait, then Iraq.

"You can see Babylon's original walls, and all kinds of things in the Bible, like Nebuchadneezar's palace," he said. "It's amazing."

On his second tour, snipers were in demand, and Munds volunteered.

He'd done a little shooting growing up in Champaign, but not enough to pick up bad habits, he said.

"Marines like to say that hunters have all kinds of bad habits they picked up from their grandpas," he said.

Being in a sniper platoon was a new experience.

"You don't have the support of 30; you're paired up.You're in places before the fighting, and after," he said.

On 10 a.m. the day he earned his medal, Munds was partnered with Thompson, who'd come to be a close friend; two other Marines were with them.

They were looking for the tallest building in the village, and ended up on the roof of a two-story concrete house, where laundry was hung.

Suddenly, they were in the middle of small-arms fire.

"You could see the concrete flying up" from the impact of the bullets, he recalls. Thompson stood up to spot the shooters and immediately took a bullet that passed through one thigh and lodged in the other.

Munds called in a medevac and the four waited under continuous fire, he said, making a helicopter rescue lethally dangerous.

"I wasn't afraid. There was literally no time to be afraid. Fear is afterward," he said.

The Marines were quickly running out of ammunition. "I fired 200 rounds in about a 20-second burst," Munds said.

Meanwhile, their assailants showed no signs of tiring.

"We were the ones that wanted to go home," Munds said. "They were already home."

When the enemy ran out of ammo or interest, Humvees pulled up to rescue the four. The bullet in Thompson's thigh had just missed his femoral artery, Munds found out.

For the next seven hours, Munds was given no rest. He joined a search party looking for the men who had shot at him.

"They gave me two IVs for dehydration, and I slept for a day," he said.

Now retired from the service, Munds is building a new life. He's a Savoy firefighter and a Parkland College student.

"My lifelong goal now is to serve my community" as a firefighter or police officer, he said.

He also has a fiancee, Mandi Christians of Champaign.

"We'll be married next year," he said.

Munds' story is part of a new book, "Gift of Valor," written by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips.

"I'm glad it's in a book now so I don't have to keep telling the story," he said.