Milo Ventimiglia meets some real heroes on USO tour

Zap2it.com (MCT) - For his 31st birthday on July 9 this year, "Heroes" star Milo Ventimiglia got a surprise party and a cake _ but he had to go quite a ways for them.

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The celebration took place during the 66th annual USO tour, to Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Ventimiglia went along, with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL players Drew Brees and Osi Umenyiora, and two Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

Ventimiglia says that his grandfather and a great-uncle fought in World War II (but only the grandfather came back) and that his mother's brother had a military career. But his military ties run even closer.

"My father was in the Army right around his early 20s," he says, "at the time of the draft. He enlisted to be a little smarter about the process, and did two tours in Vietnam.

"I always had that connection, holding his dog tags and talking to him about his experiences, which was always a curiosity to me."

Ventimiglia, who plays empathic superhero Peter Petrelli on the hit NBC series _ which returns for its third season Sept. 22 _ also contemplated putting on the uniform.

"When I was 18," he says, "I nearly went into the Navy. I had a congressional appointment to go to Annapolis and ended up passing on it. I had a buddy who had one as well, and he took it.

"He ended up being a Naval aviator, flying spy planes in places that I have no idea where he was, and I never will.

"I think whenever the country sends out its finest to a region that is needing help or is just possibly in trouble _ the politics of it, I'm not really a big supporter of war _ but I appreciate the sacrifice."

Not only did Ventimiglia get to meet the troops on the ground, he had a brief encounter with Army Gen. David Petraeus, who was just finishing his stint as the Commanding General, Multi-National Force _ Iraq.

"I did not challenge Gen. Petraeus to a push-up match," Ventimiglia says, "because I heard he would kick my a_."

Ventimiglia had much more contact with Mullen, his traveling companion.

"I was really impressed," Ventimiglia says. "He spent a lot of time with every soldier that we came into contact with there. He had a lot of business to do there, but he also was shaking hands and making sure he was asking people how they were feeling, how they were doing, what they needed, what they felt about their circumstances."

And he met an officer fresh off the front lines.

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"The first day we were in Baghdad," Ventimiglia recalls, "we were going around to a couple of different spots in Camp Victory, and this two-star general _ before we even walked into the building, he was walking back from a mission, full flak jacket, gun locked and loaded, helmet, sweating a storm.

"We'd met his entire troop before we went upstairs and talked to him. One of the first things he said was, 'Thank you so much for coming out, it means a lot.'

"He said, 'We do it for them.' He pulled out a stack of obituary cards of all the soldiers from his troop that had died. He set it on the table. This stack had to have been seven inches thick, all these leaflets of soldiers who had passed away. It was rubber-banded together.

"He said, 'We do it for them. We're getting closer. We're understanding the situation better, and we're going to make sure that these guys didn't die for nothing.'

"You could see the weight in this guy's eyes, sitting on his shoulders, the personal connection to the war. He wasn't a general who's, 'Just go out and bomb them all, I'm just going to sit back in my cush office and play "Risk" on a table.'

"He was actually out there walking the same footpath that his soldiers were walking. You could see that it weighed on him. It really did."

As for the soldiers themselves, Ventimiglia recalls a meet-and-greet with a couple of hundred troops.

"When we had a little break," he says, "the photographer taking the pictures turned to me and said, 'What's it like at home?' My heart fell. I didn't know how to answer that. I didn't want to discourage the guy and say, 'You know what, man, to be honest, I think a lot of people have forgotten about what's going on over there.'

"But I also didn't want to say, 'It's great, things are just the same.' I know that my mouth just slacked open for a second, and I said, 'Home is home. Not to blow smoke up your (tail), but I think we're all excited for everyone to get back.'

"He just nodded and understood, and that was that."

As to how the trip affected him, Ventimiglia says, "Doesn't make me want to get up on a soapbox and tell people to remember, but it makes me view things a little differently.

"I've always had an appreciation for the armed forces, and they have a very specific job, but this one was more of an appreciation for the individual soldiers that collectively make up the greatest armed forces in the world."

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