C.J. O'Berry's real heart is black and blue.

Bruised. Scarred. Still a little broken, probably.

Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about what happened, doesn't feel the physical reminder poking him in the kidney.

It was nice, then, on Tuesday morning when O'Berry got a new heart. A shiny one, untarnished by misfortune. A purple one.

O'Berry was pinned with the Purple Heart in a brief and bittersweet ceremony at the state Capitol. Several fellow soldiers from the North Dakota National Guard were there. Supportive family members took up the first three rows of seats.

In the front row, O'Berry's aunt and uncle absorbed the proceedings with a melange of pride and grief. They smiled when Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk pinned the medal on their nephew's uniform. They bowed their heads and closed their eyes when he turned away from them.

O'Berry earned his Purple Heart on Nov. 23, 2006, on a rough road in Afghanistan. One minute he was on patrol, and the next he was the target of a rescue mission, his armored vehicle torn up by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The rocket shot into the Humvee through the door behind O'Berry. Shrapnel pierced his seat and his body armor, coming to rest inside his back, near his right kidney. Another man in the vehicle had his right leg severed in the explosion.

A third man, a good man, was dead.

His name was Cpl. Nathan Goodiron. Everyone called him Nate.

He was O'Berry's cousin.

Goodiron didn't come home from Afghanistan, not in the sense that you normally talk about. His body came back, and they held a large funeral for him in his hometown of Mandaree. His parents, Paul and Harriet Goodiron, are still taking life a day at a time.

That was them in the front row on Tuesday. Proud as could be for their nephew. Sad their son wasn't there, too.

"I'm very happy, very proud of what happened for C.J. today," Paul Goodiron said after the ceremony. "Ialmost lose it whenever I think back to that night, to getting that phone call. It could have been so much worse for our family if C.J. hadn't made it out alive. It's a reminder that freedom isn't free, that freedom isn't cheap."

O'Berry and Nate Goodiron grew up together. They enlisted together in the National Guard. They left North Dakota together for service in a foreign land, but they did not come home together.

"Everyone is close in our family, everything we do, we do together,"O'Berry's father, Claude, said Tuesday. "(C.J. and Nate) were always together as brothers since they were little kids, always side by side."

No one should have to go through that heartache, but, of course, many people do. Every day. The Purple Heart means a lot. It's more than a medal. But it's not like getting your real heart back.

These are tough times in Mandaree, up on the Fort Berthold Reservation. Nate Goodiron isn't coming back. Everyone got that reminder Tuesday.

Nathan Hale, vice president of the Three Affiliated Tribes, spoke at Goodiron's funeral. He spoke about how Goodiron gave his life for what he believed in.

Hale died on Monday of a heart attack. His, too, was apparently bruised and scarred.

Hale's name and his words reminded some of the better-known Nathan Hale, the American revolutionary who said "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

O'Berry carries a similar sentiment.

If given a second chance, even knowing how it would turn out, he'd likely go back to Afghanistan.

"My immediate, gut reaction is 'Yes, without a doubt,'" he said. "But Ialso have to consider my family. They're my biggest support system. And there are the guys from the third platoon. We call ourselves 'The Misfits,"cause no one gets us like we get ourselves."

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)