President Joe Biden awarded the Medal of Honor – the nation’s highest military award for valor – to seven US Army soldiers in a White House ceremony on Friday, marking the last time he would preside over such an occasion as commander in chief.
The seven medal recipients were honored for their heroic actions during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, with six being posthumously recognized decades after their actions. The seventh, then-Private First Class Kenneth J. David, attended the White House ceremony in person.
Biden praised the recipients as “genuine, to their core heroes” who went above and beyond the call of duty, saying, “These are heroes who all deserve our nation’s highest and oldest military recognition, the Medal of Honor.”
David’s story is one of incredible bravery, as he took up a position to draw fire away from his fellow soldiers during an intense attack, fighting back with his rifle and hand grenades even when wounded. He continued to fire until he was finally evacuated.
Other recipients included Bruno R. Orig, who was killed in action in Korea after rescuing wounded soldiers and manning a machine gun to provide cover for a withdrawing platoon; Wataru Nakamura, a Japanese-American who was killed in action in Korea after he was attacked while checking and repairing a communications line and then went on to destroy a hostile machine-gun nest; Fred B. McGee, who delivered supporting fire during an assault on an enemy position and later stayed behind to evacuate the wounded and dead; Charles R. Johnson, who was killed in action in Vietnam after giving first aid to others and killing enemy troops in hand-to-hand combat; Richard E. Cavazos, who led his company in a raid on an entrenched enemy outpost in Korea, sacrificing his own safety to retrieve and evacuate casualties; and Hugh R. Nelson, who was mortally wounded when his helicopter crashed in Vietnam, but saved the life of his fellow soldier by using his own body as a human shield.
Biden closed the ceremony by saying, “Today we award these individuals a Medal of Honor. We can’t stop here. Together as a nation, it is up to us to give this medal meaning. To keep fighting. To keep fighting for one another, for each other. To keep defending everything these heroes fought for and many of them died for.”
