One for the Marines

Like many another U.S. citizen, Harry Truman wondered why no marine had won the Medal of Honor in Korea. After all, the Army had awarded 28, the Navy one. A few weeks ago, he quietly passed the word along that he thought a marine should get the nation's highest award, and if the winner was still alive, he wanted to make the award personally. He had stopped presenting medals to the families of posthumous winners; he told his aides he found it hard to go through such heart-rending ceremonies.

Last week the President got his wish. After long deliberation, the Navy Board approved Medals of Honor for four marines. Three had died while winning theirs; the fourth went to 1st Lieut. Henry Alfred Commuiskey of Hattiesburg, Miss. In the White House rose garden one sunshiny day last week, 24-year-old Lieut. Commiskey, greying veteran of more than seven years in the corps, stood at attention while the President read the citation: After the Inchon landing, armed only with a .45-cal. pistol, Marine Commiskey charged two enemy machine-gun emplacements near Seoul and killed seven North Koreans in hand-to-hand fighting. Unscathed then, he was hit a week later by shell fragments in the Seoul railway station, went back into battle after that, was wounded again in December.

While his beaming wife and two small children looked on, Lieut. Commiskey inclined his head, and the President stretched up on his toes, snapped a blue, white-starred ribbon around his neck. "Good luck to you," he said, and warmly shook the lieutenant's hand.

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