Report on a Drug Clerk

Until the day he died at 21, stocky, brown-haired Francis C. Hammond of Alexandria. Va. showed virtually none of those traits of character that are usually thought to mark the outstanding man. He was an indifferent student at his home town's George Washington High School. He took no part in athletics. He worked part time in his uncle's drugstore and plunked away on the guitar; among his friends he was a follower, never a leader. He had no great desire to join the armed services, but when he became 19, in 1951, he picked the Navy without seeming to know quite why.

He became a medical corpsman, married an Alexandria girl named Phyllis Ann Jenkins, and last February was shipped off to Korea with the 1st Marine Division. One night just a month later, Corpsman Hammond found himself in a hell on earth--bleeding from wounds and pinned down by murderous mortar and artillery fire with other men of a Marine platoon which was attempting to assault an enemy outpost far in advance of the main line of battle.

"The barrage," said a Navy citation, "was followed by a vicious assault by onrushing enemy troops. Resolutely advancing through the veritable curtain of fire to aid his stricken comrades, Hammond moved among the stalwart garrison of marines and, although critically wounded himself, valiantly continued to administer aid to the other wounded throughout an exhausting four-hour period. When the unit was ordered to with draw, he skillfully directed the evacuation of casualties and remained in the fire-swept area . . . until he was struck by a round of enemy mortar fire and fell, mortally wounded. By his exceptional fortitude, inspiring initiative and self-sacrificing efforts, Hammond . . . saved the lives of many marines."

Last week Francis Hammond's young widow, now a nurse with the Alexandria Health Department, took her 2 1/2-month-old baby, Francis Jr., to the Pentagon Building. There, Secretary of the Navy

Robert B. Anderson presented her with a Congressional Medal of Honor won by Corpsman Hammond for "conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty"--the fifth awarded a Navy man during the Korean war. The yawning baby was photographed; the Secretary carried him proudly off down corridors to show to admirals. Then the hero's wife took the hero's child in her arms and went quietly back to Alexandria with the bit of metal which had been molded in testimony of the fine name of Drug Clerk Francis Hammond.

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