Garden Grove, Calif. ? Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor had just an instant to react when a hand grenade was tossed into his rooftop hideout in Iraq.

“He was thinking, ‘I could run for it or I could throw it,”‘ said George Monsoor, the Navy SEAL’s father. “Instead, he fell on it.”

Monsoor, a 25-year-old Southern Californian, is among a small number of fighting men in Iraq who lost their lives after making the in-a-heartbeat decision to throw themselves on a grenade to save others.

One was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. Monsoor and another are being considered for the decoration.

Since the Civil War, 3,461 men and one woman have received the medal, awarded for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Before the war in Iraq, the award was last bestowed for bravery during the 1993 battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.

President Bush said Nov. 10 that Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, of Scio, N.Y., would receive the Medal of Honor, becoming the second person to be decorated with the award for service in Iraq and the first Marine since the Vietnam War. The only other recipient from the Iraq war is Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, 33, a man from the Tampa, Fla., area who died in battle in April 2003 at the Baghdad airport.

In April 2004, Dunham, a 22-year-old corporal, threw himself on a grenade that was dropped during a hand-to-hand fight with an insurgent near Husaybah, Iraq. He covered the explosive with his Kevlar helmet, which along with his chest plate absorbed some of the blast. He died of head wounds a few days later.

“He always took care of people,” said Dunham’s father, Daniel. “I don’t believe it was instinct. You have a choice.”

Dunham’s father said he was “very honored that my son did the right thing and saved people’s lives,” but added: “They say there’s no greater thing. Well, there is a greater thing, and that would be to have my son back.”

At the same time, the fallen Marine’s father said he understood his son’s heroics: “When you are in a war situation, that guy beside you is your brother or sister. And I think that most of us would give up our lives for our family.”

Another Marine, Sgt. Rafael Peralta, 25, of San Diego, also is being considered for the nation’s highest military award.

Peralta was shot during a house-to-house search in Fallujah. Lying wounded on the floor of a home, he grabbed a grenade that had been lobbed in by an insurgent. The blast killed him.

“If he wouldn’t have scooped up the grenade, the other three of us in the room that day would have been killed,” said former Cpl. Robert Reynolds, who was in Peralta’s squad. Reynolds said Peralta sacrificed himself because “he wanted to make sure we all went home.”