Three Heroes

Of the twelve soldiers who have won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Korea, all but three are either dead or missing in action. Last week those three stood at rigid attention as their citations were solemnly read off and the President awarded them the nation's highest military honor:

P:Sergeant John A. Pittman, 22, Company C, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division, a farmer's son from backwoods Talulla, Miss. On November 26, near Hamhung, Sergeant Pittman volunteered to lead his squad in a counterattack against an enemy-held hill. The Chinese poured down mortar fire, burp guns began their deadly whinny. Pittman went down with a mortar-fragment wound, got up, pushed doggedly forward. A grenade landed in the midst of his squad.* Hero Pittman threw himself upon the missile, smothered the blast with his body. He left a hospital to get his decoration. P:1st Lieut. Carl H. Dodd, 26, of Company E, 5th Infantry Regiment, a coal miner's son from Kenvir, Ky. On January 30, Lieut. Dodd's platoon was pinned down near Subuk by crossfire from cleverly camouflaged machine-gun nests. Dodd alone stood up, charged the first nest singlehanded, wiped it out. The Chinese started heaving down grenades. Dodd pitched them back, hollered for his men to move up, dashed on without waiting. The platoon followed, bayoneting the Chinese as they fled. Seven guns were destroyed before a concentrated enemy fire pinned them down for the night. In the morning, Dodd took his men on up to the summit and won it once and for all. P:Master Sergeant Ernest R. Kouma, 31, tank commander, Company A, 72nd Tank Battalion. He is a farm boy from Dwight, Neb., fought in the Battle of the Bulge. On the night of August 31 on the Nak-tong River Line, Sergeant Kouma's tank was surrounded by 500 screaming Koreans. While the infantry pulled back, Kouma drilled round after round of cannon and machine-gun fire into the charging Reds. The Koreans kept coming. Kouma leaped from his turret, crawled back to a .50-cal. machine gun mounted on the tank's rear deck, fired until it was empty. He hauled out his .45, emptied that, and began heaving grenades. Nine hours later, bleeding and exhausted, Kouma rode his tank back to the company line. In its wake, 250 of the enemy lay dead.

* Pittman is the third to win the medal in Korea for smothering a grenade, and the only survivor. In World War II, 13 Army men won the medal for the same courageous deed; only one lived.

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