Oh? I'm certainly ready to accept that the story is not accurate, but I'd be interested to hear about the mission and how it performed.
Depends what you define as combat. Missions of critical transport, over enemy occupied territory, yes. Hot LZ, no. But then again, the vast majority of aircraft don't do hot LZ missions, and the v-22 wasn't designed for that.
In fact, I have heard from a few people that the v-22 is highly valued as it has the response speed and range to "shrink" countries.