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I guess those Buffalo Soldier-re-enactment dudes are going to have to chill for a day. The real deals are at the podium, looking sharp and ready for their moment.

Three New Mexicans, surviving members of the famed 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Air Corps, best known as the Tuskegee Airmen, are receiving Congressional Gold Medals today.

This isn't the State Fair parade. A Congressional Gold Medal goes to the few, the proud and, in the case of these amazing black men, the truly deserving.

A quick look at the medal system is in order. First, the Congressional Gold Medal is not to be confused with the Medal of Honor, which is given to military members only. Or the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is given out by the commander-in-chief.

The Congressional Gold Medal, which doesn't get awarded that often, is described as "awarded to any individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity, and national interest of the United States."

The Tuskegee Airmen participated in more than 15,000 sorties on 1,500 missions. A thousand black pilots were trained and 150 were lost in battle or training. Sounds like an outstanding deed in the interest of national interest to me.

In 2000, the Navajo Code Talkers received Congressional Gold Medals. It's a big deal. Congresswoman Heather Wilson, a graduate of the Air Force Academy, is scheduled to be on hand for today's ceremony.

One of the three New Mexicans who unfortunately won't be in Washington, D.C., today is John Allen of Rio Rancho, who had a kidney removed yesterday. We had a chance to chat a bit about his experience. And about fate.

A little nervous about his operation and disappointed at not being able to make the trip, the 78-year-old nonetheless is justifiably proud of his honor. Allen is one of fewer than 400 surviving Tuskegee Airmen nationwide.

"I was seeking an education," Allen said. "As a little black boy coming up out of Florida, you could imagine what is was like then."

His parents were subsistence farmers, growing enough to eat and sell, and not much more.

Considered too smart for the Army, where he was originally drafted after lying about his age because his friends were going in, Allen was moved to the Air Corps and Tuskegee. And he became a witness to history.

The stories are legion and well documented: racism, isolation and the horrors of the now infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, when 400 mostly illiterate black men were left to degenerate in the late stages of syphilis and eventually die, under the name of science.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton offered a national apology, so to speak, for the horror. A decade later the nation offers a national thank-you.

Drafted late in the war, Allen never saw combat action, but he saw plenty otherwise.

"We were in a predicament together, with people who didn't believe we could do it. We were supportive and supported each other," Allen said. "You got to make the best of the situation and go from there."

And make the best of it he did, wrapping a 27-year military career at Kirtland a few years ago that Allen describes as "a whole career that's been about guns and bullets."

I was struck by his experience late in the Tuskegee existence, which does not receive much notice.

"The program was winding down, and they didn't necessarily want a group of cocky, black second lieutenants not willing to be told what to do," Allen said.

I don't know about you, but I'm liking the image of a group of black, cocky, combat-hardened second lieutenants taking no stuff in the late 1940s. There were, however, limitations.

"In my days, you couldn't tell a white airman strictly, `Do this,' " Allen said.

The Germans called them Schwarze Vogelmenschen, or Black Birdmen, probably the mildest nickname they received, which is almost funny considering it came from the enemy.

Today, we get to call them heroes.