I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully at night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life.

This is how Sgt. Kim Munley - the hero of Fort Hood - summarizes her life on her Twitter page.  It's a comment on her humility that someone who fellow police officers call "Mighty Mouse" for her oversized bravery would describe her life this way.

Sgt. Munley made a difference in the lives of dozens of people who are alive today at Fort Hood because she stopped Nidal Hasan's shooting rampage while he still had plenty of ammo left.  She did so because she ran to the sound of the gunfire.  As a result, she prevented the kind of large scale killing that has happened in other shootings when law enforcement personnel chose to surround the scene without making an immediate entry.

The real heroes in our nation are the ones who don't think they're heroes.  What makes them extraordinary is that they see themselves as ordinary Americans who are simply doing their job when they risk their own lives to protect others.  This is what makes them Great Americans.