Korean War Veteran Gets Purple Heart After Six-Decade Wai

From Fox News: Korean War Veteran Gets Purple Heart After Six-Decade Wait
For 58 years, no medal or ribbon adorned the chest of Korean War veteran Eugene Bradford.

For 58 years, few knew of the Palo Alto native's heroic actions on July 27, 1953, when he carried a fallen Marine to safety despite being wounded and immediately returned to the front line only to be injured again.

For 58 years, the 77-year-old was simply content to know he had saved a man's life that fateful day on Hill 126.

On Tuesday, however, Bradford found himself in the middle of a Purple Heart ceremony at the VA Menlo Park Community Living Center. It took nearly six decades and a campaign by his equally tenacious sister, Cindy Baxter, but Bradford finally received his first formal accolade.

"We don't do these things for Purple Hearts," Bradford said of his actions on the battlefield. "We do these things because we want to save the man down there. It could've been me. It could've been you."

A love of country, not the possibility of commendations, led Bradford to enlist in the Marines as a Palo Alto High School student. Family members had served in every conflict as far back as the Spanish-American War, his sister said.

"I wanted to get in there and do my part," Bradford said. "I felt it was my turn to get into the war because I am a very patriotic person."

Bradford's job in the war was to keep lines of communication up and running for Howe Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. He was doing just that on July 27, 1953, when his company found itself locked in fierce combat with enemy forces outside Ponbudong.

Bradford heard someone jump into his trench on Hill 126 and found himself face to face with a knife-wielding enemy soldier. After a brief and bloody fight that left his assailant dead, a slightly wounded Bradford lobbed several grenades down the slope and sprinted to the end of the line.

There Bradford spotted, lying in a rice paddy, an unconscious Marine who had been trying to escape his overrun position on neighboring Hill 111. Bradford didn't think twice about charging to the rescue, an action he says probably wasn't wise in hindsight, though not because of the heavy enemy gunfire.

"Never run down a hill," he said matter-of-factly. "If I had tripped, I would've broken every bone in my body."

Bradford was hit in the groin by three pieces of shrapnel as he carried his fellow Marine to safety.

"After that, I took about a half-hour break," joked Bradford, who declined first aid because he wanted to reestablish the communication lines that had been disrupted by the fighting.

For another five hours, Bradford took command of a platoon that had lost its lieutenant in the pitched battle and worked on the communication lines as enemy mortars rained down around him.

"Then the inevitable happened," he recalled. "One of the rounds got too close to me and knocked me out."

Just days later, the war was declared over as Bradford recovered. He stayed in the service, retiring at age 65 with the rank of sergeant.

It wasn't until Baxter was helping Bradford move from Fresno to Menlo Park roughly two years ago that it came to light his combat actions had gone unheralded. Baxter said she was shocked to find no medals among his possessions, just two witness statements from that day along the 38th Parallel.

"He said, 'I didn't get any,' " Baxter said. "I thought that was weird. So, I wanted to find out why."

Baxter contacted Veterans Affairs officials in Fresno, who helped her file the necessary paperwork. About a year later, she said, a box containing about a dozen medals and ribbons arrived on her doorstep. She presented them to her older brother at Tuesday's Purple Heart ceremony, which was arranged with help from the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

While he never expected to receive the Purple Heart, let alone any official recognition, Bradford said it is a reminder of why he fought to keep communism from consuming the entire Korean peninsula. The medal is only awarded to members of the armed forces injured by an enemy in combat.

"This is a good example of how freedom is not free," he said. "Any sane person hates war, but at times to be free you've got to fight for it."